National Right to Life Thinks Texas Woman Denied an Abortion Is ‘Hilarious’

One anti-choice organization is having a real good chuckle about the people affected by HB 2, the Texas omnibus anti-abortion law that has forced one-third of the state’s abortion facilities to cease providing abortion procedures.

National Right to Life (NRTL), which received the blessing of Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott at its anti-choice convention earlier this summer, has published a derisive and glib piece about Marni Evans, an Austin woman who had scheduled an abortion appointment for November 1 after undergoing a state-mandated ultrasound and fulfilling therequired 24-hour waiting period.

When the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the evening of October 31 that the state could begin enforcing the part of HB 2 that requires abortion providers to secure admitting privileges at a local hospital, Evans’ appointment was canceled. Evans and her fiancé, John Lockhart, told their story to the Texas Tribune, much to the amusement of the National Right to Life’s News Today blog.

“It’d be hard to pick a less sympathetic couple,” the NRTL blogger scoffs at the “obviously educated” couple and their “self-indulgent, self-pitying whine.”

But that’s not the “funny” part. No, the “funny” part is the couple’s nerve at telling their story at all, being undeserving as they are of basic human respect. NRTL quotes a commenter on the video who wrote, “Is this video meant to be funny? Because it was hilarious! From the dramatic pauses for the info graphics to the contrived dialogue hitting on every ‘outrage cliche,’ this ‘interview’ was just ridiculous.”

Not only are Evans and Lockhart not uneducated, young, and bumbling enough to deserve an abortion in the opinion of the folks at National Right to Life, but the group calls the Texas Tribune itself “pro-abortion-to-the-gills,” which will likely come as a surprise to anyone who actually reads the publication; the Trib probably didn’t get Ted Cruz to grant it a one-on-one interview at this year’s popular TribFest schmooze party by advocating for free abortions on demand.

The NRTL’s headline calls Evans and Lockhart the “wrong couple to use to complain about pro-life law,” as if it’s some kind of laugh riot when two people use their honeymoon fund to book a flight to Seattle in order to exercise a constitutional right.

There is, of course, nothing “wrong” with Evans and Lockhart sharing their story, and they are brave for doing so. But what does make Evans and Lockhart a less than ideal example of the impact of HB 2 is not that they are too old, too educated, and too prone to what NRTL calls “psychobabble” about their “childish” ways. It is that they are not representative of the Texans who will be most negatively affected by HB 2.

What makes Evans stand out, despite the fact that she has been forced into a terrible and unnecessary situation, is that she has the means to travel out of state to exercise her constitutional right to legal abortion, and is able to speak publicly about it at all. Evans says as much in her interview with the Tribune:“I also think I’m lucky to be in a position in my life where I have education, I have support, I have a lifetime of knowledge. I feel OK about coming forward.”

The Marni Evanses of Texas will jump through logistical hoops to get abortions—no, they shouldn’t have to, but in the end they will get their procedures, probably legally and safely. It is the Texans who are too poor to fly to Seattle or to drive to New Mexico, who cannot easily pass through South Texas’ border checkpoints, who cannot set their own work schedules, who do not have supportive partners and families, who cannot find child care for their existing children, who must wait until their next pay day to scrape together funds—it is these Texans who will either be forced by the state to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, or who will attempt dangerous home abortions or seek out back-alley providers.

The Lilith Fund, a nonprofit that helps Texans pay for their procedures at licensed abortion facilities, answers hotline calls from these Texans every day. By their count, the fund had eight recent clients whose clinics closed before their scheduled appointments, though the number is likely much higher, since the group can only track the one-third of hotline callers whose procedures they are able to fund.

Their stories are maddening; one day these Texans had access to safe, legal abortion, and the next day they did not.

There is Elena, the Rio Grande Valley mother of three who had an appointment at Whole Woman’s Health in McAllen when the clinic was forced to stop providing abortions because the doctor there does not have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

“She was waiting ’tilshe got paid on October 31 so she had a little more money to put towards her procedure,” said Lilith Fund board member Sarah Tuttle, who chairs the organization’s hotline committee. But because of the timing of the Fifth Circuit ruling, which came down on the pay day that Elena was waiting for, she got caught in the gap.

And there is Suzy, the Houston mother of three who has had to push back her procedure multiple times because she hasn’t been able to raise enough money to pay for it. Now she is 19 weeks pregnant.

“She was engaged, but when she became pregnant her partner left and said he couldn’t be involved or help out to even fund the procedure,” said Tuttle. Now that Texas has banned abortion after 20 weeks, Suzy will likely have to find even more money to get to New Mexico to obtain a procedure she couldn’t afford in her hometown.

And there is Mary, a San Antonio sexual abuse survivor who became pregnant after she was raped.

“She cannot bear the thought of her rapist’s child,” said Tuttle. “She is nine weeks pregnant and was kicked out of her home when the abuse was exposed.” Tuttle says she hopes Mary was able to get an appointment before her San Antonio clinic was forced to stop providing procedures.

Perhaps these Texans’ stories of rape, abuse, and financial hardship are also “hilarious” to National Right to Life. Or perhaps it’s just easier to mock people for their demeanor—”the boyfriend just looks annoyed”—than it is to acknowledge the reality of HB 2, which will force Texans who don’t enjoy the resources or the family support that Marni Evans has, into back alleys or state-compelled pregnancy.

It’s the NRTL’s “psychobabble” that we all have to fear! Also their lies, harassment, & violence.

CJ99

I wonder if these rampaging lunatics would find it so fun if THEY were forced to undergo sterilizations to avoid unwanted pregnancies. No doubt they’d scream the loudest if such were the case yet they think its really funny to dictate the personal lives of evryone else.

expect_resistance

Yes, because state-mandated ultrasound rape is really funny. So sick of the NRTL bullshit and lies.

CJ99

Y’know if someone said they were “probed by aliens” the same way people would laugh. But when crazy religious nuts wanna do the same to people it suddenly makes sense. yeah I do get what you mean though, the far right wants those procedures not for any sound medical reason but only to harrass women from having contraceptive choices.

CJ99

smug is too kind a word for them, boundless arrogance is closer to the truth. I’ve said it before they’re (mostly) white rich men over the age of 50 with cheap suits & really expensive watches, cars homes etc. For those who’ve taken a look at how they live its no surprise they act like banana republic dictators.

expect_resistance

Should have specified, “state-mandated VAGINAL ultrasound is rape.” Having to be probed vaginally for no medical reason is rape by the state.

Ineedacoffee

The stories I hear coming from the US are scary. I dont get how abortion is wrong but forced pregnancy and birth are ok. Its utter BS. Does it not matter that these woman may suffer for the rest of their lives, that the kids may suffer? I just dont get it
Makes me grateful the PM here in Australia hasn’t *Yet* got his hands on our rights here, not through lack of trying though. If he had his way he would

Arachne646

Oh, Canada is not any different. Abortion is a medical question strictly between a woman and her doctor here, and any moves toward the scary kinds of creeping legal oppression that are happening in the US are too controversial to get far in Parliament. Our Prime Minister and Conservative Party, though, are from the same right-wing Christian roots as the Tea Party in the US, and as you say, “If he had his way he would”. Their recent convention showed their extreme anti-choice agenda.

Ineedacoffee

And thats the only people it should be between. A woman and her doctor.
Our PM is hanging for his invite to the Tea Party. We can only hope the other side get the sh*t together in the next few years so we only have one term of the 1950 wishing Abbott

Arekushieru

Yup, Harper refused to stop the funding cuts towards family planning in countries typically categorized as Third World. He also refused to step in and stop an MP’s bill from being introduced on the floor, although he eventually voted against it. But, still, the National Post should look more closely at its own leaders before accusing Justin Trudeau, our Liberal Party leader, of hypocrisy because he supports freedom of speech when it doesn’t come at the expense of another’s rights. Apparently, by that logic, Stephen Harper only supports freedom of speech when it DOES come at the expense of someone else’ rights. DERP.

Jennifer Starr

Do you think that maybe when you get out of your teens and grow up a bit, you might have something of value to add to the conversations here?

CuzImtheMom

I am a 56 yr old mother of 3 boys PLUS the extra one I took into my heart and my family, Jennifer, and due to the fact that I was 38 when pregnant with my last, I was FORCED to undergo a “vaginal ultrasound” described by someone as “vaginal rape”. I am more than qualified to speak on this and I will tell you that it was SO bad, SO violating, that I had to ask…no, to BEG my own husband (through my sobs) to leave the room. So don’t judge his/her remark as “juvenile” when you obviously haven’t got a clue.

expect_resistance

I’m sorry you had to go through that. It is really violating.

CuzImtheMom

Thank you for your kindness. Even after all these years, the anguish and yes, violation, still haunt me. And when I think of a confused, desperate, possibly alone young woman having to endure that, just to appease some elected official (with no medical training), it makes me sick. Have no doubt, this IS a war on women. I’m just so thankful I was fortunate enough to have my husband (now of 30 years) with me. And no, it was NOT for an abortion, though I am pro-choice…we thought there were problems.

Ineedacoffee

Im so sorry you had to undergo that.

Jennifer Starr

Most people get abortions early in a pregnancy, when heart tones would be hard to detect without a vaginal ultrasound.

Jennifer

Oh geez. Well, I think doctors have pretty much determined when a heartbeat begins.

goatini

She CHOSE to have you. CHOICE is the topic we are discussing. It was her RIGHT to have a CHOICE. And we will continue to ensure that ALL women can make their own CHOICES.

Erin Frances

That’s the problem. We have used the word choice to make it sound better. It really was a genius farce. instead of making it about terminating (ending) pregnancy let’s call it a choice. The land of the free won’t want their choices taken away.

To me it was life or death. My life or my death.

Jennifer Starr

Wow, you really are incredibly self-centered. I’m guessing teenager?

dance commander

Sorry, but you are not so important that your right to live comes before your mother’s right to her own body.

You are a self-centered piece of shit.

dance commander

So when are you going to start donating your organs and blood and bone marrow so that others can live?

Not doing so = selfish

Jennifer

There’s not much comparison between cutting out your organs and sharing your body with a being that was created from it.

JamieHaman

What? Bone marrow donations are life saving, as are partial lobe liver donations. Actually less risk to the donor than there is in giving birth.

Jennifer

I’d say that depends on the surgery or the birth.

dance commander

Studies have demonstrated that organ blood and bone marrow donation is safer than pregnancy.

580k women die worldwide from pregnancy.
1.2 million are permanently disabled in the USA alone.

Jennifer

Can you provide a study of that?

dance commander

Check with the World Health Organization

fiona64

Complications of pregnancy kill women every day in this country (the US is #50 in maternal mortality). Gestation and delivery are amongst the most dangerous things that women do.

fiona64

Someone doesn’t know how live donor procedures work …

Obviously a teen.

JamieHaman

Dear Lord I hope she is. Hate thinking there are many women in 20’s on up that have so much to learn. On the other hand, if shes’ a teen, (or early 20s) she went to school while the shrub was POTUS, and likely got an ignorance I mean abstinence only education, which does put a huge group at a serious “facts” disadvantage.

dance commander

The fetus uses the woman’s organs.

Birth is violent and painful – and often involves cutting.

Blood and bone marrow donation are extremely safe.

Organ donations are also safer than pregnancy.

Jennifer

Births greatly vary, some are quick and done without any medical assistance at all; our bodies were created to make babies, after all. I don’t know if I want children, but I know of two women who had a great deal, one of whom had nine or ten, and they are gorgeously, strikingly healthy women. Blood donation is very safe, I’m sure, but not all organ donations are.

dance commander

You are lying.

Pregnancy permanently changes a woman’s body and not for the better.

I have proven this.

Pregnancy and childbirth have been the #1 killers of women throughout all of history, and even today, with modern medicine, pregnancy and childbirth are the #2 killer of women.

You are flat out wrong.

Jennifer

Actually no, I don’t recall you giving a source that says EVERY pregnancy damages a woman’s body or that no birth has ever been brief and done without medical help. You make pregnancy sound like some kind of cancer for pete’s sake.

dance commander

Every pregnancy does in fact damage a woman’s body.

The pubic symphisis is permanently widened for starters, and the pelvis is scarred.

fiona has a friend who has had 5 children. this friend can no longer ride a bike because her pelvis is fucked up from all the child birthing

Jennifer

Sounds like some pretty terrible stuff went wrong during her pregnancies; I’m glad many women who wish to have more babies are not so unlucky. I am taking your word and Fiona’s for that.

No woman I know who had a baby, or several, are unable to ride bikes, Drama Queen.

dance commander

fiona will explain it to you
she has a degree in anthropology

and yes, a woman’s body is permanently scarred by pregnancy

women are worse off from pregnancy, not better, and not the same

Jennifer

Fiona will have to tweet me if she wishes to talk.

fiona64

Oh, no, sweetie. I can talk without permission from a teenage boy.

Pubic symphysis diastasis is the reason that several women in my circle have lost the ability to ride bicycles or even walk normally.

And what is it caused by?

Pregnancy.

Ella Warnock

Well, not being able to ride a bike is only an . . . inconvenience, after all. 8-p

fiona64

As is being unable to walk properly, of course.

Jennifer Starr

What? And get lost among your many lovetweets to various actresses?

Ella Warnock

**FLOUNCE**

Jennifer Starr

My grandma had 8 pregnancies–7 births and one miscarriage due to the great smog of London in the early ’50s–you can read moe about that at: http://en dot wikipedia dot org/wiki/Great_Smog. Her back is shot because of this–three surgeries and a daily pain patch–the patch is better than the vicodin she was taking before. She’s had problems from a botched cesarean where the surgeon mistakenly cut through her stomach muscles. It has not been easy. Does she regret giving birth to so many? No, not at all. But it was a choice she and my grandpa freely made together–they both came from large farm families and they decided they wanted a large family as well. And yes,they both are completely pro-choice. As am I.

One of the hosts of the atheist podcast “Reasonable Doubts” is pro-choice and has FIVE kids!

Jennifer Starr

It’s a good story to relate :)

dance commander

I haven’t related it yet. Just woke up. You can do it since I see you over there.

JFC those people are self-righteous fucktards.

Jennifer Starr

Oh I know–the one who calls herself ‘Faye Valentine’ regularly posts over at Stanek’s house o’ lies under another name and she’s a real peach–she once opined that Savita’s miscarriage was actually a DIY sex-selection abortion and that maybe the medical staff let her die because they knew this–and she was okay with that. Sick individual.

dance commander

Aw. So no wonder the comment section over there has been taken over by pro-liars. Looks like word got out and they descended on the place in droves.

Ella Warnock

Yeah, I remember that one. She’s always one for facts and documentation, so she says, but she was perfectly happy with that unsubstantiated drivel.

dance commander

She has just responded to me a bunch of times over there. I am considering just ignoring her.

Ella Warnock

That’s probably for the best. According to her, she’s got all the science and rationality and facts on her side. And she’s an atheist, too, so you’re not going to get away with accusing her of being influenced by religion! Really, she’s got it all wrapped up.

dance commander

I gave in and responded but omg, she really thinks she’s some sort of expert on embryology.

she’s all like: ‘blastocysts are differentiated ,the blasocyst is not a blueprint, it has placental cells and baby cells, that blastocyst is a child’ etc etc

Ella Warnock

Not that it matters in the least, of course. Science, or lack thereof, wouldn’t be on the table if I were considering abortion. It wouldn’t even be in the room. Why would it? “Science” isn’t going to help me complete a pregnancy, adopt out a kid, or decide to raise said kid that I didn’t really want.

Antis are always blathering on about “inconvenience.” OF COURSE altering your body and adding an entirely new person who needs care 24/7 to your life is “inconvenient.” They act like admitting that it’s inconvenient, and much more, is some sort of great moral failing. I cook with a gas stove rather than a wood stove because it’s more – convenient. I use a dishwasher because it’s more – convenient. I drive a car instead of a horse and buggy because it’s – convenient. I use a washer and dryer instead of a washboard and hanging clothes in the yard because it’s – convenient. Unless you’re someone who’s doing everything the hard way because it makes you so much more virtuous than the rest of us, then stop using the term “inconvenient” when speaking of abortion.

But yeah, her “background” is in biology. She’s a regular Richard F’in Dawkins.

L-dan

That’s nice. Since you don’t know any of them, it never happens.

I don’t know anyone who’d needed bypass surgery, must be a fraud.

fiona64

Nope. Her pregnancies were perfectly normal … as was her body’s response to them. The pubic symphysis never fully reconnects after a pregnancy, and it widens further with each subsequent one.

fiona64

Yeah, actually, she did. She gave you an extensive list. Thanks for proving you didn’t read it.

JamieHaman

Choice is exactly the right word. A woman chooses to bring a child to term, to love, to raise to teach to enjoy.
What you don’t seem to realize, is this, so many women are battered and abused by husbands and boyfriends when the “partner” objects to the pregnancy. Often the child is battered and bruised after birth by the same husband or boyfriend, if it lives that long.
Better to use birth control and have no child that is not a welcomed wanted child.
It was her decision to put her life or death on the line to carry you to term.
Respect that choice.

Jennifer

I agree-birth control, yes, but abortion at most stages in which it’s done, no. Why should a woman abort because she’s afraid of being beaten? Those husbands or boyfriends are trying to take away THEIR choice to have the babies.

dance commander

Abusive men get women pregnant against their will and beat them as a matter of course.

Jennifer

Some of them get them pregnant against their will, but others as you said don’t WANT pregnancies. If the woman does, however, her choice should come first and she should not be forced to abort.

dance commander

But if she is force to be pregnant by the abusive man, she should FORCED to remain pregnant by the law.

In that case, NOT HER CHOICE, you say.

Jennifer

Actually I’d say it depends on the state of the pregnancy. Thank God for after-morning pills.

dance commander

So if a rape victim can’t access a morning after pill because pro-life pharmacists won’t hand them over, then I guess she will just have to give birth eh?

Jennifer

No, there’s still a good window of opportunity for her to get an early one.

Jennifer Starr

I do think that the choice over what to do with a pregnancy should be the decision of the woman who is pregnant. Yes.

JamieHaman

Just in case you weren’t aware, most women who try to leave abusive men are more likely to be seriously injured, if not killed when attempting to leave. Partners and husbands have both been willing to rape in an effort to force a pregnancy, making leaving that much harder. Also, these men are perfectly capable of threatening parents, siblings, and other children of the abused woman.
More than one news story is available for your perusal if you would like to examine the number of women and or their families killed by these abusive men.
Just an FYI, most women abort in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, not later.

Jennifer

No indeed Jamie, I am aware of women brutalized by men who only respect their right to abort. I have a short film that was made in dedication to such women.

JamieHaman

Jennifer the men who abuse women, pregnant women, children, those guys don’t respect the right of those women to get a safe legal abortion. They don’t respect any dammed thing as far as I can tell.

Jennifer

I know, that’s the problem.

L-dan

At most stages at which it’s done? The vast, vast majority are done in the first trimester.

1.5% are after 20 weeks.

100% are not your decision to make (unless you’ve had one, in which case we’ll reserve that miniscule percentage for you).

Jennifer

It shouldn’t be anyone’s decision to kill a developed child.

dance commander

No developed children are killed in abortion.

Jennifer

Yes they are. Rib cages, lungs, are all removed or forced to stop growing and the heart is stopped.

I shouldn’t be anyone else’s decision to force people to risk their lives and health as life support systems.

Jennifer

Women have great chances to live and thrive in pregnancy, but abortions always end in deaths, sometimes a developed child’s and people defend the right to kill their bodies.

dance commander

1) pregnancy is not a state of health

2) developed children are born

3) people defend the right of women to not be enslaved and tortured for a potential person

L-dan

They are still risking life and health, even if they also have a chance of coming out fine. Can I force you to donate a kidney? Not, ‘would you donate one?’ but it it right to force you to undergo the risks of surgery and the potential health problems to save a life?

Pregnancy has a greater risk of death and long term health effects than donating a kidney. I know of no-one who has had children who does not have some form of negative changes to their bodies and health. Not the cosmetic stretch marks and changes in shape, but the joint aches that one associates with injury, mild to major incontinence, metabolism shifts, etc. And those are the mild ones.

This is not a process that should be forced.

Additionally, you still characterize a fetus as a developed child. Though you continue to refuse to say at what point you think that occurs–talking about 7 and 8 month abortions and then heartbeats, though the latter happens much much earlier.

dance commander

She is also trying to pretend that a 2005 study on fetal pain is outdated and therefore invalid.

I bet she’ll say the same about the 2010 one.

L-dan

And yet is happy to trot out debunked Nazi ‘science’ about rape victims rarely getting pregnant.

fiona64

Women have great chances to live and thrive in pregnancy

As has been shown to you *repeatedly,* pregnancy is not a state of wellness.

It’s not like stuffing a pillow under your blouse and then playing with a baby doll. Good grief. I had a complication that *kills* women (hyperemesis gravidarum). Another friend of mine has pubic symphysis diastasis so bad that she cannot walk properly or ride a bike. Other women develop obstetric fistulas … or pre-eclampsia/eclampsia … or a whole slew of other *common complications* that can kill people.

You need to stop spewing utter nonsense and pretending that it has any grounding in reality.

dance commander

91% of abortions are before 13 weeks – when it’s still the size of a jellybean

61% are before 9 weeks – when it’s the size of a pea

1.5% are after 20 weeks, and the majority are for medical emergency

Jennifer Starr

The vast majority of abortions are done during the first trimester, because when a woman decides she doesn’t want to be pregnant she tends to want to take care of it rather quickly. But if you make early abortion difficult or impossible to obtain, you’re going to see later abortions and have more deaths and injuries from self-induced or back-alley abortions. Are you okay with that?

Jennifer

No, I’ve said I support the right to early abortions.

Jennifer Starr

Okay. So I’m assuming that you don’t support things like defunding Planned Parenthood, waiting periods, and TRAP laws that force clinics to close by imposing unreasonable regulations and unnecessary and costly renovations. Correct? Because all these things can make an early abortion harder or impossible to obtain.

Jennifer

I’m really not sure about defunding PP, because I don’t trust them. I don’t think a being with a heart should be killed unless there’s a very unusual reason, so a waiting period should neither be enforced or be thought necessary. I’m not familiar with TRAP laws, but will look into them; right now I have to exit the discussion, it’s taken up hours of my time. Have a good week.

Jennifer Starr

You’re not familiar with a lot of things, which is puzzling. And I’ve gone to Planned Parenthood for pap smears and also when I thought I might have endometriosis (I did not). I trust them. And if you truly support the right to early abortions, you need to make those abortions possible to obtain. So these clinics need to stay open so that women can go to them. Correct?

dance commander

Heart isn’t proof of life.

Brain function is.

Cardiac cells can beat in a petri dish.

In fact, in the case of clinical brain death, the heart can still beat, but nobody is home.

fiona64

I don’t think a being with a heart should be killed unless there’s a very unusual reason,

So, you’re vegan?

right now I have to exit the discussion,

Don’t forget your pail and shovel!

dance commander

Don’t forget your pail and shovel!

Now who’s gonna clean my cat’s litter box?

fiona64

TRAP = Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.

And you’ve made it abundantly clear that you do support those laws.

fiona64

Your naivete is breathtaking.

I’m a survivor of domestic violence. It’s a whole lot more than “being afraid of being beaten.” It’s about being tied to an abuser for a *minimum* of 18 years (do you think an abuser is going to surrender his parental rights so that an infant can be placed for adoption? Really?). Women are *killed* by their abusers with alarming regularity.

When you get out of high school, the real-world learning curve is obviously going to smack you right in the face.

Arekushieru

And it could have been HER life or death, but you don’t care about THAT, do you?

Jennifer

She respected her mother’s choice to take a chance with her life, instead of definitely ending her daughter’s. Nooo, I’m sure strangers respect her mother more than she does.

dance commander

Actually, she would have FORCED her mom to give birtth, even if it maimed or killed her mom.

That’s selfish.

Jennifer

You don’t know that, as she sounded very respectful of her mother’s story, and since she feels so strongly, her mom probably raised her to be pro-life.

dance commander

She sounded as if she considered her mom to be a slave.

That her right to life outweighed her mom’s right to self-determination.

Jennifer

Some find it hard to stomach that a person’s right to live would weigh less than someone’s right to end their life. But very few dispute the right to end a doomed pregnancy.

dance commander

So how many organs have you donated to save lives?

How often have you given bone marrow and blood to save lives?

Jennifer

I would if it saved someone; I’ve considered getting tested. However, those people have no “natural” right to use of my organs; my own child, however, certainly deserves temporary space in my body, which does not take any of my organs away from me.

JamieHaman

Sign up for organ and marrow donation. It will definitely save a life, or lives. Talk to your family, and let them know you are serious about donation after accidental death, or they will object, and may object anyway. Be sure to sign the paperwork. Marrow donation, unlike heart, lung, and skin donation does not mean you the donor must die.
In a perfect world, no the child does not take any of your organs. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.
Kidney failure is a possibility, dialysis is not a good option for a pregnant woman at all. Heart failure has been known to happen too. Hysterectomies are fairly common, due to uterine and cervical damage caused by the weight of a child. Nerve and spinal disk damage due again to a child’s weight.

Jennifer

I don’t think I want to donate after death, but I will certainly consider your suggestion for living donations. Thank you for your encouragement.

dance commander

Get tested and sign up for a live bone marrow donation right now.

Otherwise I won’t believe that you give a flying fuck about saving lives.

Jennifer

LMAO Sign up and what, photograph the document? I don’t have to prove a damn thing about my personal life to you.

dance commander

You want to make pregnant women’s personal lives your business

Tit for tat honey

Jennifer

No, I don’t really care what they do so long as they don’t kill developed children. And I still don’t demand they send me utra-sounds to prove they’re not.

dance commander

No developed children die in abortions.

JamieHaman

Ok, I’ll bite. Why not donate after death? Is that a religious thing? It is for a lot of folks. Or something else?

Jennifer

Because I’m very touchy about what’s done to bodies after death, and I don’t want mine..harvested. It’s a personal thing.

dance commander

So you think that a corpse should have more right to it’s body than a pregnant woman.

Jennifer

It’s not a corpse when still a live person, who decides what will be done before death.

dance commander

You would give more rights to a corpse than a pregnant woman.

Jennifer

Depends again on the length of pregnancy. A corpse doesn’t kill (unless we’re talking Walking Dead).

dance commander

So why do you think that pregnant women should have fewer right than a corpse?

JamieHaman

“harvested” What an interesting choice of words.

Jennifer

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to do perse, but I’m not comfortable with the idea.

JamieHaman

It’s ok by me if you don’t do the after death donation, just please please register for the bone marrow thing. Doctors no long want to accept any donor older than age forty, so if you are younger than that, go ahead. You may not get called, depending on your genetic nationality, but still it is a life saved. It’s done on an outpatient basis, you get to go home at the end of the day, and is usually done with a local anesthetic, not put under at all. Piece of cake.

L-dan

A personal thing? Like some people’s feeling about sharing their bodies while still alive with another organism?

Seriously? We should be respectful of your wishes about what happens to your body after death, when you’re no longer even around to care; but pregnant people’s wishes about what happens to their very alive bodies should be restricted because you’re uncomfortable with some of their choices?!

Honestly, Jenny is one of the most offensive pro-liars I have come across.

I can’t restrain myself in the face of such idiocy.

Jennifer

You haven’t tried the whole time we’ve been talking.

dance commander

Because you’re an imbecile.

Jennifer

I’d be amazed if you ever attempted anything resembling rationality.

dance commander

Yeah? Such as the arguments I use that you cannot refute?

Jennifer

It’s not in the least hypocritical. My body is mine. But my baby’s, which can’t survive without me? Not mine; not my heart to stop or my limbs to tear. I really am floored by your view of the fetus as practically a parasite (which it’s not, btw, since a parasite is by definition another species stealing from a body).

dance commander

Actually, the fetus IS a parasite:

1) The zygote actually overpowers the woman’s immune system in the same way a parasite does. Isn’t that interesting!?

Here are some scientific findings:

Further investigation revealed that placental NKB contained
the molecule phosphocholine, which is used by the parasitic nematode
worm to avoid attack by the immune system of the host in which it lives.

During implantation, fetally derived cells (trophoblast) invade the
maternal endometrium and remodel the endometrial spiral arteries into
low-resistance vessels that are unable to constrict. This invasion has
three consequences. First, the fetus gains direct access to its mother’s
arterial blood. Therefore, a mother cannot reduce the nutrient content
of blood reaching the placenta without reducing the nutrient supply to
her own tissues. Second, the volume of blood reaching the placenta
becomes largely independent of control by the local maternal
vasculature. Third, the placenta is able to release hormones and other
substances directly into the maternal circulation. Placental hormones,
including human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and human placental
lactogen (hPL), are predicted to manipulate maternal physiology for
fetal benefit.

The host-parasite relationship during pregnancy is a fascinating
interaction and research in this area will improve understanding of
disease pathogenesis and the various consequences of the host immune
response, being host-protective, parasite protective and contributing to
disease pathology. Pregnancy poses an interesting problem for the
immune system of the dam as she is essentially carrying a
semi-allogeneic tissue graft (the foetus) without immunological
rejection taking place.

Another role for foetal transferrin receptors on trophoblasts could be
to bind maternal transferrin at the materno-foetal interface, thus
frustrating maternal immunosurveillance. This is similar to a mechahism
used by schistosomes in the host-parasite relation where host proteins
are bound by the parasite to escape immunological recognition.

2) Biologist pz myers writes: A new paper by Emera, Romero, and Wagner suggests an interesting new idea. They turn the question around: menstruation isn’t the phenomenon to be explained, decidualization, the production of a thickened endometrial lining, is the key process.

All mammals prepare a specialized membrane for embryo implantation, the difference is that most mammals exhibit triggered decidualization, where the fertilized embryo itself instigates the thickening, while most primates have spontaneous decidualization (SD), which occurs even in the absence of a fertilized embryo. You can, for instance, induce menstruation in mice. By scratching the mouse endometrium, they will go through a pseudopregnancy
and build up a thickened endometrial lining that will be shed when progesterone levels drop. So the reason mice don’t menstruate isn’t thatthey lack a mechanism for shedding the endometrial lining…it’s that they don’t build it up in the first place unless they’re actually going
to use it.

So the question is, why do humans have spontaneous decidualization?

The answer that Emera suggests is entirely evolutionary, and involves maternal-fetal conflict. The mother and fetus have an adversarial relationship: mom’s best interest is to survive pregnancy to bearchildren again, and so her body tries to conserve resources for the long haul. The fetus, on the other hand, benefits from wresting as much
from mom as it can, sometimes to the mother’s detriment. The fetus, for instance, manipulates the mother’s hormones to weaken the insulin response, so less sugar is taken up by mom’s cells, making more available for the fetus.

Within the mammals, there is variation in how deeply the fetus sinks its placental teeth into the uterus. Some species are epithelochorial; the connection is entirely superficial. Others are endotheliochorial, in
which the placenta pierces the uterine epithelium. And others, the most invasive, are hemochorial, and actually breach maternal blood vessels.
Humans are hemochorial. All of the mammalian species that menstruate arealso hemochorial.

That’s a hint. Menstruation is a consequence of self-defense. Femalesbuild up that thickened uterine lining to protect and insulate themselves from the greedy embryo and its selfish placenta. In species
with especially invasive embryos, it’s too late to wait for the moment of implantation — instead, they build up the wall pre-emptively, before and in case of fertilization. Then, if fertilization doesn’t occur, the universal process of responding to declining progesterone levels by sloughing off the lining occurs.

P.S. The maternal-fetal conflict is also a conflict between males and
females: it is in the man’s reproductive interests to have his genes
propagated in any one pregnancy, while it is in the woman’s reproductive
interests to bail out and try again if conditions aren’t optimal for
any one pregnancy

L-dan

Oh hey…same PZ post I tracked that paper through. ^^

dance commander

got a link?

I usually post what he had to say, because he does a nice job explaining it for dumbfucks

L-dan

Oh gods…I will make a note to hunt it tomorrow since it’s easier at work while I can access university resources without remembering a really ancient password.

dance commander

I love how Jenny asserts things without citations, suggests we use google and do the work for her, and then demands that we cite our sources and then *ignores* us when we do.

I have only had to paste some of these things 3-4 times for ‘her’

Jennifer

LOL I didn’t ignore your sources, I pointed out why I had doubts for some of them. You’ve asserted many things without citations or links, and I took you and Fiona’s word that she knew someone damaged from pregnancy instead of calling you a liar.

dance commander

Actually, I backed up everything.

And then you ignored what I showed you, so I had to paste the info time and time and time again.

And then you complained that data from 2005 was ‘outdated’ meanwhile you are saying that rape rarely results in pregnancy because of ‘studies’ done by Nazi doctors in the 1930s and 1940s.

fiona64

Every woman who has ever been pregnant has been damaged by it. Period. Some of them worse than others.

Homeschooling should be illegal, I swear to god.

dance commander

Thanks :)

Jennifer

Survival can be rough, but that’s what has to happen for our entire species to survive; you realize you did the same awful robbing of your own mum’s body, you selfish twerp? If pregnancy’s such a bitch, maybe you should try to find a way to just grow fetuses in petri dishes.

dance commander

you realize you did the same awful robbing of your own mum’s body, you selfish twerp?

Yes I do, Which is why her bodily autonomy comes before mine, and I would gladly have not been born and would have prefered she had an abortion if she did not want to be pregnant.

Unlike you, i won’t demand that others risk life and limb for me.

dance commander

Survival can be rough, but that’s what has to happen for our entire species to survive

Last I checked, the human race wasn’t on the verge of extinction

And here’s a question for you.

You say that rape isn’t ‘natural’

Well, let’s say you are living in a post-apocalyptic world. There are 5 women and 3 men left. In order for the species to survive, the women must procreate. Except they don’t want to.

Should these women be forced, through rape, to propagate the species?

fiona64

If pregnancy’s such a bitch, maybe you should try to find a way to just grow fetuses in petri dishes.

It is a bitch … and if you are ever pregnant, you’ll learn that from primary experience. Just like I did. Pregnancy is NOT sunshine and fairy-farts.

Ella Warnock

If it was so goddamn wonderful women would never have embraced safe, dependable birth control in the first place.

dance commander

Exactly. I was going to point that out to one of the assholes over on that thread the other day.

They are all acting like pregnancy is wonderful, and why would the selfish whores not want to give birth?

Ella Warnock

Of course, that’s the very problem, and why it’s not really about “innocent babies” or even abortion itself. When women were given the opportunity to do something – anything – besides birth and raise kids, that’s exactly what they did. Some of us opted out altogether; and as much as they’ll tell you they have no problem with tubal ligation (so there’s no sloughing of innocent zygotes, doncha know!) and a childfree life, everything else they proclaim sends a dramatically different message.

Look, patriarchal authoritarians have been coming out of the closet like some kind of comedy sketch ever since Obama became president. We’ve all had the opportunity to hear – really HEAR – the things that they say about women. We’ve had to endure a renewed and ridiculous national discussion about what women should be “allowed” to do. Allowed. As. If. I was EVER required to beg permission to live my life as I chose. THAT’S what we’re talking about here, and everybody knows it.

dance commander

Oh yeah, and that Carmello guy came back with some bullshit about how women MUST tell the guy if she is going to abort, and how he would dump any woman who’d abort without telling him first, because it’s half his DNA damnit!!

Amazes me how everyone thinks that the bodies of pregnant women are public fucking property.

Ella Warnock

“Must,” huh? I wonder how he thinks he’s going to enforce that one? Any woman getting “dumped” by Carmello would be a lucky woman, indeed.

It amazes me that they seem to actually believe that most women take some sort of big consensus or ask permission before making major life decisions, as if we’re somehow completely unable to handle things discretely and privately. Nobody but my husband really knows anything about my private life, and one thing you wouldn’t want to do is get on my bad side by prying or thinking you’re entitled to know anything about me. The few who did were swiftly and thoroughly put in their place (including my mother).

Ella Warnock

Well, we can already create zygotes an a petri dish. We’d need considerably larger containers to grow fetii, but that is the natural next step. Artificial wombs in which to transfer unwanted embryos. You shouldn’t be so derisive; sounds like a very “pro-life” idea.

L-dan

But my body is mine and the fetus is taking up residence. I’m floored by the fact that you don’t know enough biology to realize that it *is* essentially parasitic. The relationship is parasitic, even if it doesn’t meet the ‘different species’ definition of ‘parasite.’ For reference, male anglerfish attach to female anglerfish in a parasitic relationship, and it is described as such.

We undergo menses specifically because of how aggressively parasitic the fetus is. The fact that it can’t survive if detached? That’s an obligate parasitic relationship there.

How can it have a right to my body without this negating my own rights to bodily autonomy?

Jennifer

Can you say the fetus has no right to its own body? A tiny baby girl has no right to keep her ribs, lungs, or even womb invaded?

dance commander

Your right to life does not override another person’s right to their body

understand?

If this was so, organ donation would be MANDATORY

dance commander

For that matter, you think your corpse’s right to it’s organs override another person’s right to life

your keeping of your own organs demands that someone else die because you would not donate

Jennifer

Not necessarily; remember the voluntary donors? It would only compare to an abortion if my corpse somehow had those people torn up.

dance commander

Denying people use of your body is no different than denying a fetus use of a woman’s body.

You are letting people die, either way. And that is legal.

Jennifer Starr

If you’re talking about a separate, autonomous individual–the guy across the street, for example–then you’re right. But pregnancy is a unique situation, and the fetus places a lot of stress upon the organs of a woman. Even in healthy and uncomplicated pregnancies.

Jennifer

Exactly, it IS a unique situation.

dance commander

Normal, expectable, or frequent PERMANENT side effects of pregnancy:

stretch marks (worse in younger women)

loose skin

permanent weight gain or redistribution

abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness

pelvic
floor disorder (occurring in as many as 35% of middle-aged former
child-bearers and 50% of elderly former child-bearers, associated with
urinary and rectal incontinence, discomfort and reduced quality of life —
aka prolapsed utuerus, the malady sometimes badly fixed by the
transvaginal mesh)

changes to breasts

varicose veins

scarring from episiotomy or c-section

other
permanent aesthetic changes to the body (all of these are downplayed by
women, because the culture values youth and beauty)

increased proclivity for hemmorhoids

loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis)

higher lifetime risk of developing Altzheimer’s

newer
research indicates microchimeric cells, other bi-directional exchanges
of DNA, chromosomes, and other bodily material between fetus and mother
(including with “unrelated” gestational surrogates)

pre-eclampsia
(edema and hypertension, the most common complication of pregnancy,
associated with eclampsia, and affecting 7 – 10% of pregnancies)

eclampsia (convulsions, coma during pregnancy or labor, high risk of death)

gestational diabetes

placenta previa

anemia (which can be life-threatening)

thrombocytopenic purpura

severe cramping

embolism (blood clots)

medical
disability requiring full bed rest (frequently ordered during part of
many pregnancies varying from days to months for health of either mother
or baby)

diastasis recti, also torn abdominal muscles

mitral valve stenosis (most common cardiac complication)

serious infection and disease (e.g. increased risk of tuberculosis)

hormonal imbalance

ectopic pregnancy (risk of death)

broken bones (ribcage, “tail bone”)

hemorrhage and

numerous other complications of delivery

refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease

aggravation
of pre-pregnancy diseases and conditions (e.g. epilepsy is present in
.5% of pregnant women, and the pregnancy alters drug metabolism and
treatment prospects all the while it increases the number and frequency
of seizures)

severe post-partum depression and psychosis

research
now indicates a possible link between ovarian cancer and female
fertility treatments, including “egg harvesting” from infertile women
and donors

research
also now indicates correlations between lower breast cancer survival
rates and proximity in time to onset of cancer of last pregnancy

research also indicates a correlation between having six or more pregnancies and a risk of coronary and cardiovascular disease

Less common (but serious) complications:

peripartum cardiomyopathy

cardiopulmonary arrest

magnesium toxicity

severe hypoxemia/acidosis

massive embolism

increased intracranial pressure, brainstem infarction

molar pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease

(like a pregnancy-induced cancer)

malignant arrhythmia

circulatory collapse

placental abruption

obstetric fistula

More permanent side effects:

future infertility

permanent disability

death.

L-dan

But it’s fine to demand the pregnant people be torn up by birth if they don’t want to be?

L-dan

You’re right! A baby girl has a right not to have her womb invaded. And so do I.

Jennifer

Good.

L-dan

Aww..nice edit there. Your one word reply agreeing with me, sit funny when you realized what I was saying?

And no. I think a baby girl (babies are born) has the same rights as a grown woman not to have her womb invaded.

When there is a developing embryo or fetus invading my womb, I have the right to remove it. I have the right to disengage from *anyone* using my body against my will. The fact that the fetus is non-viable and will die from this removal does not mean that I do not have this right.

Abortions in the second trimester (only 1.5% happen after 20 weeks) are primarily due to maternal health, fetal abnormalities discovered at this point, and those who could not access abortions any earlier thanks to the cost and the ever-growing barriers placed in the way of getting them. I do not feel that there is anything going on with fetal development at that point that necessitates me inserting my opinions into those decisions in any way.

As has been explained to you over and over again, third trimester abortions (about 1,000/year) are for emergency cases, maternal health, gross deformity, etc. So no. I have no desire to insert *anything* that would make those situations harder. I do not want to make people with much wanted pregnancies jump through the judgmental “is my abortion justifiable” hoops when things go horribly wrong.

fiona64

An embryo is not a “tiny baby girl.” And, at the stage that most abortions occur, we are talking about embryos.

Your hyperemotionality is duly noted, though …

fiona64

No, it is 100 percent hypocritical. I’m sorry you’re not bright enough to understand that. You’re creeped out about posthumous organ donation, but you’re a-okay with a living, breathing woman’s medical decisions being taken away from her?

Considering that you can’t have posthumous organ donation without permission from the donor while s/he is still alive, you are cheerfully affording more rights to a dead body than to a living one.

And that, m’dear, make you a hypocrite.

fiona64

A fetus has a parasitic relationship with the pregnant female. That’s how it grows and develops.

Were you homeschooled or something?

dance commander

However, those people have no “natural” right to use of my organs; my
own child, however, certainly deserves temporary space in my body, which
does not take any of my organs away from me.

So you support forced pregnancy in the case of rape then yes?

Rape = natural

Rape fetus = natural

Jennifer

I’ve said before a rape victim has numerous options after a rape, which is NOT natural.

dance commander

No dumbfuck, rape IS natural.

Rape is a reproductive strategy that evolved because it enables males to reproduce without investing in their offspring.

Sex is natural, rape is natural.

And by your logic, if a woman is raped, the rape fetus is her baby, and therefore, she should be forced to give birth.

Jennifer

Ahh, so you believe rape is natural and babies should be killed if the mother wishes it. Thanks for showing your beliefs.

dance commander

Rape IS natural and you have just argued that rape pregnancy IS natural because if a woman is pergnant she is is pregnant with her ‘baby’ and therefore should be forced to give birth

YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS ARGUING THAT RAPE PREGNANCY IS GOOD AND IS WHAT WOMEN WERE MADE FOR

Jennifer

I never said women were made for “rape pregnancy” or that it’s good. You’re hysterical (not as in funny, as in an emotional fit).

dance commander

Still your argument, at it’s core

‘women were made to give birth, a pregnant woman is pregnant with her offspring’

yep, sounds like you are a rape apologist

Jennifer

LOL I’m not the one calling it natural, nor does it make sense to say that you must support rape if you DON’T support killing a fetus because of it. I’m starting to seriously believe your mind has been traumatized; no joke.

dance commander

Nope, you said that women’s bodies were made to have babies, and that because of this, women should be forced to give birth

To follow your ‘logic’ to it’s conclusion, rape is ‘natural’ and therefore ‘good’ as is rape pregnancy and birth.

Jennifer Starr

It all depends on whether or not the rape victim feels that she can go through a pregnancy that was forced upon her. The victim’s health, both physical and emotional are paramount, and the choice should be hers and only hers. Some women choose to carry and raise the child or give the child up for adoption. That is their right and I support that. In fact, there is an article on this site written by a woman who was impregnated from rape and made that choice, and Planned Parenthood gave her the resources to help her do it. But no rape victim should ever be forced into that–they’ve had enough forced upon them already.

fiona64

I’m really sorry that you were not taught to read for comprehension. I understand that a good many people are helped by a gamed called “Hooked on Phonics.”

dance commander

You are arguing that the right to live overrides the right to bodily autonomy, period.

Therefore, organ donation, by your logic, should be mandatory across the board – natural or not.

Jennifer

No, every female in every species is created to be able to sustain offspring; that child is literally a part of the mother from the beginning and requires sustenance from the mother, which can be stressful, but is not the same as a stranger, fully developed, demanding the organs of another stranger with no attachment to them. Besides, a sick person does not necessarily need organs to live, and if they DO, there are plenty of voluntary donars.

dance commander

Anatomy is not destiny.

Vaginas were also created for penises.

By your logic, women were created to be raped.

Jennifer

That doesn’t make any remote sense. The female body is traumatized by rape, as is the male body, and this is why pregnancies from rape are usually rare.

dance commander

The female body is traumatized by rape, as is the male body, and this is why pregnancies from rape are usually rare.

Citation needed.

Jennifer Starr

Actually, no. The chances of getting pregnant from rape are just as likely as getting pregnant from consensual sex. Same odds.

Jennifer

That’s not what I’ve heard; when raped, the body is under severe stress and so is the mind, which is also why couples trying to adopt often conceive a child AFTER they’ve adoped and therefore taken the pressure off of themselves to conceive. But I’ll do some extra research to be sure.

L-dan

You’ve heard wrong. The research (Nazi research by the way…really fun fucking read that is, let me tell you), indicated that stress can cause irregularities in ovulation. That isn’t going to remotely affect the chances of pregnancy for someone who, for example, has recently ovulated.

This is old research and much debunked.

Jennifer Starr

Yeah, quite obviously you need to do a lot of research about a lot of things, because despite what you may have heard, what you just said is not actually factual.

Jennifer

My research and knowledge on the core of my argument, however, remains the same.

Jennifer Starr

No it doesn’t. Women have the same chance of getting pregnant from rape as they do from consensual unprotected sex. Women’s bodies do not have a way of killing or rejecting sperm or of shutting that down. You are just plain wrong on this. I don’t know how much more clearly I can state this.

fiona64

Your “research and knowledge” are clearly miniscule.

Jennifer Starr

She doesn’t seem to have done much research on anything. I suspect she’s being fed this information by parents or someone and just accepts it without question.

fiona64

You need to educate yourself. A lot.

Here’s a good place to start learning just how much you *don’t* know about rape:

And there’ll be more, believe you me. Even if you don’t bother reading anything that causes cognitive dissonance, maybe someone else will learn that you, and Todd Akin, are both wrong about the female body.

Any female capable of ovulation may become pregnant after rape by a fertile male. Rape causes tens of thousands of women to become pregnant each year. In a three-year longitudinal study
of 4,000 American women, physician Melisa Holmes estimated from data from her study that forced sexual intercourse causes over 32,000 pregnancies in the United States each year.[7] That study revealed that among women aged 12–45, pregnancy occurred in 5% of victims of rape.[8] A 1987 study also found a 5% pregnancy rate from rape among 18- to 24-year-old college students in the US.[9] A 2005 study placed the rape-related pregnancy rate at around 3–5%.[10]

Physician Felicia H. Stewart and economist James Trussell estimated that the 333,000 assaults and rapes reported in the US in 1998 caused about 25,000 pregnancies, and up to 22,000 of those pregnancies could have been prevented by prompt medical treatment, such as emergency contraception.[11] A study of Ethiopian adolescents who reported being raped found that 17% subsequently became pregnant,[12] and rape crisis centres in Mexico reported the figure the rate of pregnancy from rape at 15–18%.[13]

Estimates of rape-related pregnancy rates may be low since the crime is under-reported, resulting in some pregnancies from rape not being recorded as such.[10]

Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that causing pregnancy by rape may be a mating strategy in humans, as a way for males to ensure the survival of their genes by passing them on to future generations.[14] Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer are key popularizers of this hypothesis. They assert that most rape victims are women of childbearing age and that many cultures treat rape as a crime against the victim’s husband. They state that rape victims suffer less emotional distress when they are subjected to more violence,and that married women and women of childbearing age experience less
psychological distress after a rape than do girls, single women or
post-menopausal women.[15]

Rape-pregnancy rates are crucial in evaluating these theories, because a high or low pregnancy rate from rape would determine whether such adaptations are favored or disfavored by natural selection.[16]

Quote: In 1982, Fertility and Sterility, the journal of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, reported that the risk of pregnancy from a rape is the same as the risk of pregnancy from a consensual sexual encounter, 2–4%.[3]

Quote (ibid): In 1991, a study in a maternity hospital in Lima
found that 90% of new mothers aged 12–16 had become pregnant from being raped, the majority by their father, stepfather or other close relative. An organization for teenage mothers in Costa Rica reported that 95% of its clients under the age of 15 had been victims of incest.[5]

dance commander

Rape-related pregnancy: estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women.

Holmes MM, Resnick HS, Kilpatrick DG, Best CL.

Source

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston 29425-2233, USA.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

We
attempted to determine the national rape-related pregnancy rate and
provide descriptive characteristics of pregnancies that result from
rape.

STUDY DESIGN:

A national probability sample of 4008
adult American women took part in a 3-year longitudinal survey that
assessed the prevalence and incidence of rape and related physical and
mental health outcomes.

RESULTS:

The national
rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of
reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101
pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related
pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from
assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these
victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and
47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4%
of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had
already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant
whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption;
an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.

CONCLUSIONS:

Rape-related
pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many
unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic
violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the
United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at
preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual
victimization.

fiona64

That’s not what I’ve heard; when raped, the body is under severe stress and so is the mind,

What you’ve heard is a bunch of crap.

JamieHaman

“Every female in every species is created to be able to sustain offspring:” Look up female reproductive birth defects. Scary stuff. While some can be corrected in hopes of a full term pregnancy, many cannot.
There are not plenty of voluntary donors, that is why there is such a shortage, and so many people die waiting.

L-dan

Just because we are able to sustain a pregnancy, does not mean we are required to. Nor do I care that it’s not precisely the same level of stress as hooking a stranger up to someone’s body, the principle that we do not get to force other people to act as life support systems is the same.

We do not get to force blood donation, which is far, far less strain than any pregnancy. Because it’s not about how much ‘trouble’ it is. It’s about the right to basic bodily autonomy.

dance commander

No, every female in every species is created to be able to sustain
offspring; that child is literally a part of the mother from the
beginning and requires sustenance from the mother

That also applies to a rape pregnancy, dumbass.

Unless of course you are arguing that women’s bodies are not ‘designed’ to sustain an embryo created through rape

idiot

Jennifer

A pregnancy being natural doesn’t mean the method of conception was, honey.

dance commander

Rape is natural unless of course you are arguing that penis into vagina is not natural?

Rape-related pregnancy: estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women.

Holmes MM, Resnick HS, Kilpatrick DG, Best CL.

Source

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston 29425-2233, USA.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

We
attempted to determine the national rape-related pregnancy rate and
provide descriptive characteristics of pregnancies that result from
rape.

STUDY DESIGN:

A national probability sample of 4008
adult American women took part in a 3-year longitudinal survey that
assessed the prevalence and incidence of rape and related physical and
mental health outcomes.

RESULTS:

The national
rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of
reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101
pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related
pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from
assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these
victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and
47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4%
of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had
already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant
whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption;
an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.

CONCLUSIONS:

Rape-related
pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many
unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic
violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the
United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at
preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual
victimization.

JamieHaman

She is also trying to make it harder for other women to get a safe legal abortion. Women, contrary to popular “conservative” views, don’t wake up one morning and decide that today is a good day to have an abortion. Most agonize over what else they can do to keep their baby. People who claim abortion is ok for rape and or incest, don’t really have a problem with abortions, they have a problem with women they consider to be slutty, or careless. Or poor.

Jennifer

That’s a valid point, and you’re certainly right about most women agonizing. I have no wish to judge a woman who aborted because she thought either she or her baby would die (especially if the baby would die in the womb). But pro-life people should remember that what it really comes down to is the level of development for the child; if a “slutty” woman got an after-morning pill, she’d get rid of a zygote, not a person, so I’d have barely a moral qualm. But if a seven-month pregnant rape victim wanted one (bc, for example, all the increased movement of the fetus became more emotionally difficult for her), as much as I’d sorrow for her, I couldn’t tell her I personally would believe there’s nothing wrong with taking apart a fetus.

Jennifer Starr

Actually, Plan B prevents conception. It won’t do a thing for you if you’re already pregnant.

Jennifer

All the better if it prevents conception to begin with. Thank God.

Jennifer Starr

See, these are things you should kind of already know, or at least take the trouble to find out before posting, rather than after.

Jennifer

Since I forgot a few details, I did “kind of” know. But I’ve known from the start that washing out semen and an egg is different from killing a being with a heart, and that I support the use of after-morning pills or very early abortion pills, whether or not I confused the two.

Jennifer Starr

We have actually had a few posters from time to time who have thought that Plan B was the same as RU 486. And many people who have mistakenly thought that conception takes place right during sex or directly afterwards, when actually it’s anytime between 24 and 72 hours after sex.

Jennifer

Another huge relief for many, I’m sure.

Jennifer Starr

Again, people should know most of these things. This is information that people should probably either know, or at least take the time to look up before spouting an opinion.

fiona64

People who have taken high school biology know this …

L-dan

And I couldn’t tell her that I personally believe she should continue a pregnancy that will re-traumatize her. I think it’s pretty horrible that people would be willing to deny her making the choices she feels are best for her.

Jennifer

I don’t blame you. It’s a terrible situation, choice or no choice.

dance commander

You don’t really believe that.

You spend all your time talking about how women were made to give birth and about how dumb sluts kill their babies at 8 and 9 months for funsies and for extra funsies stab them in the skull

Jennifer

I never used the words dumb sluts; you are lying.

dance commander

No but quite clearly that’s what you think women are.

You think they wake up one day and decide to have a frivolous abortion at 8 or 9 months, don’t you?

Jennifer

Never said that either; I said not all abortions that late or CLOSE to that late are done for life-saving reasons. You’ve willed yourself to think I find women sluts.

dance commander

I said not all abortions that late or CLOSE to that late are done for life-saving reasons.

Prove 30 week abortions done for frivolous reasons.

That article you linked did not prove any such thing.

Find a better source, fucktard.

fiona64

Yeah, actually, you did. You repeatedly insisted that women at 8 months’ gestation were seeking abortion for no reason.

You need to keep better track of your lies, little boy.

L-dan

Seriously. I’d like to see some credible evidence that there are legal abortions happening that late for anything other than extreme reasons. Otherwise all this noise over them is just stupid and done solely as a manipulative supposed ‘gotcha’ argument.

dance commander

i still don’t know why you think women would have an abortion at 8 months for frivolous reasons.

How fucking stupid can you be?

Oh, and fetal deformities and other issues are often detectable around 20 weeks, so no woman would be waking up and deciding to have an abortion at 8 months for down syndrome.

Jennifer

LOL, stupid? They don’t have to be for frivolous reasons, but I certainly don’t believe that ALL abortions performed seven months or later have always been for life-saving reasons.

I told you partial births are still legal in nine states, and Dr. Robinson, a colleague of Tiller, still provides them. Even if this wasn’t so, however, seven-month pregnancies are also killing babies.

dance commander

citation needed

and it’s not partial birth

it’s an intact D and E

so that women with dead and dying fetii can have a corpse to mourn, vs. having it removed in pieces

Jennifer

I know most involve D&E’s, but partial birth is still done in several states. I’ll look for the interview.

dance commander

D and E Is partial birth you dumbass

FFS

LEARN TO FUCKING READ

You’re dumber than my cat.

Jennifer

Let’s see, above you said:

“and it’s not partial birth

it’s an intact D and E”

Now you’re saying they’re the same, and calling me a fucktard. Either way, still legal.

It’s hard. Essentially I have to say to myself, “Is this a very
compelling story?” And I feel very bad about that because who am I to
say, “Well, it’s compelling because you’re 11,” and then I see a similar
case when the girl’s 14 and I think, okay… but then, what if you’re 15,
what if you’re 16? How do we draw these lines? What is the ethical
difference between doing an abortion at 29 and 32 weeks? Is there a
meaningful ethical difference? Can I justify it? Will I have to justify
it, and to whom?

It comes down to a question of safety, many times. If I feel that
there is a likelihood that there will be complications, and I won’t be
able to finish the procedure in the office—and we’re an office, not a
surgery center—I will only do the procedure if there is a fetal anomaly.
Not for elective procedures. And I say “elective” as if the woman is
choosing between pairs of shoes, and it’s not like that, not even close,
but I will turn that patient down. For example, in the movie, I had a
patient from France and she just desperately did not want to be
pregnant—but she was 35 weeks, and gestational age is plus or minus
three weeks, so she could’ve been at 38 weeks, and that’s just too far
along. It wouldn’t be safe.

And there is nothing in that article that backs up your assertion that babies skulls are pierced.

Jennifer

You’ve never heard of a manner of abortion which invades the brain? You can check the articles I linked last night for different methods. Either way, it’s late-term abortion, and the article I linked to clarifies that it’s still legal in nine states, which you failed to acknowledge. The article also says this:

“I could tell you a million reasons why women who are perfectly smart—and they are, these are not stupid women—don’t come to know they are pregnant. They have no weight changes, they don’t feel sick, they don’t feel movement, or if they do they think it’s gas. Suddenly someone says, “Hmm, your stomach’s looking big, have you taken a pregnancy test?” And the person may have taken a test, and it may have come out negative—I’ve had women that only got a positive on their third test. And either way they think they just got pregnant. They have no idea they’re in their 24th week. So they make an appointment for an abortion, and it takes a few weeks, and they have their ultrasound and find out that they’re at 27 weeks, which is too far for an abortion anywhere. So then what happens? They either give up or have a baby, or they go on the Internet and they find us.”

She performs abortions long after most doctors, who have no qualms removing a baby with a beating heart, have stopped performing them. Seven-month abortions are STILL performed and that is long after there’s a well-developed child, including one that in many cases survives on its own. I still find it amazing that people like you refuse to call it a baby until-what? The minute it breaks out of the cervix? Goes into the birth canal?

dance commander

Its called an intact D and E you fucking twit, and it’s used so that the parents can have a corpse to MOURN.

And your article did not 1) mention intact D and E and 2) the woman said she will not perform an abortion on healthy late term babies

Suffice to say, you’re full of complete shit.

Jennifer

Unless of course the baby is just a little younger and therefore not a baby in her eyes. She still does it far after most doctors with any qualms refuse. Nor does the article have to mention intact D&E, it still mentioned late-term, and perhaps that means D&E that is NOT intact.

“Its called an intact D and E you fucking twit, and it’s used so that the parents can have a corpse to MOURN.”
A corpse. As in, a person.

Unless you think the woman should be forced to carry it to term? Or have it removed in pieces so she can’t mourn the body?

Jennifer

*rolles eyes* Yes, after all my bitching about tearing up babies, I certainly want them taken apart.

dance commander

Banning an intact D and E = tearing apart as the only alternative

Jennifer

It was the un-intact D&E I said I am strongly against.

dance commander

Make up your fucking mind. Derp.

fiona64

Dumbass, the only remaining D&E under the law is the one that requires feti to be dismembered. You have been crowing about how horrid intact D&E is (the thing you call ‘partial-birth abortion,’ which is now illegal) … without realizing that it was actually the safest and most humane procedure available in those tragic cases.

Jennifer Starr

You realize that you’re talking about much wanted pregnancies gone horribly wrong. Who is anyone to judge the grief of these parents?

Jennifer

I don’t judge their grief at all; it’s horrific.

L-dan

No, but you’d be fine adding to it by making it harder or impossible for them to make the best choices for their situations.

Jennifer

*smiles wanly* Life-saving situations are usually pretty clear, and I don’t dispute those, esp. since a nurse friend said most of them occur through intact D&E or induced labor. But I do dispute pregnancies ended because of suspected but livable things like Down Syndrome, or breathing issues.

dance commander

Down Syndrome isn’t usually liveable, you know.

DS often comes with other severe defects, many of them heart defects, and the baby dies of a heart attack within a few months or years.

They suffer.

dance commander

Your amazing ignorance blows my mind.

L-dan

Sorry, it’s not for you to dispute what level of disability a given family feels able to handle when considering their pregnancy. I realize there is room for discussion about the attitudes and societal supports (see: lack thereof) that make it much much harder to raise children with disabilities. But that’s a separate issue from bodily autonomy and the right of someone to not be an incubator.

Who are you to decide that you know what is the best choice in all of those situations? That you can simply wave away all of that with a “I dispute…” Ugh.

Also..Intact D&E is the ‘partial birth’ method you’ve said was so horrible…but now it’s fine? Consistency isn’t your strong point. But then it’s hard to be consistent with so little real information.

dance commander

There was a fellow on another Patheos blog who was arguing that abortion for DS was wrong because DS ‘is not a disability’. In his mind, DS is no different than having different colored eyes, or hair.

And there is also a dark and dirty secret about what happens to disabled children who’s families cannot afford to care for them.

Of course, it’s not nearly as bad in US facilities. But, there is no loving family to take care of the disabled child. Children in US facilities spend their days tied to the bed, treated like furniture.

L-dan

Yeah. And most people think of DS as what they see on TV and so forth that are mostly higher functioning. They don’t see or hear of the endless surgeries for things like the heart problems that come with the syndrome, or the ones on the worse-off end of the scale that are in a vegetative state.

They want to deny that pregnancy remotely affects health and well-being (it’s natural!! So’s cyanide) while simultaneously pretending that many disabilities are not states of unwellness.

They want to hold up the “I could have been aborted and my life is worth having, so nobody should be allowed to make potential-me not exist, ever,” while ignoring “I was unwanted and there wasn’t a choice about having me so my life was so bad that I wish I never existed and don’t wish this on anyone.”

It’s a state of profound cognitive dissonance.

dance commander

yeah I debated one stupid twit on yahoo who kept arguing that she was a 23 week preemie and that SHE grew up to be completely normal, and how abortion for any reason is bad because SHE grew up to be super smart and talented blah blah.

I pointed out that of the extreme neonates that survive, only 1 out of a 100 will ever go on to lead a normal life. And she’s like ‘but it’s worth it for just that one!!!’

It’s pure ego. Narcissism. ME ME ME ME ME. I don’t care if other people SUFFER , I DESERVE TO LIVE, EVEN IF IT MEANS OTHERS WILL LIVE A LIFE OF TORTURE

She also said that the ward she was in was stock full of preemies, and that everyone was healthy as shit! And that half the nurses in the hospital were ‘micro-preemies’ and they turned out just fine too!!

Honestly, I don’t think these people understand what an extreme neonate is, or the challenges that they face.

L-dan

Yeah. Part of me thinks that it would be more rational to not have that push to keep extreme neonates alive. I’m not sure that the sum total of grief wouldn’t be less for parents grieving lost infants and moving on, vs months of harrowing ‘will they make it or won’t they’ plus years of the ups and downs of the associated health issues and watching a child suffer through that, etc. All with the hope of the tiny chance of a good outcome.

But they’re not my children, or my decisions. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t try extraordinary measures if I had that misfortune, any more that I want extraordinary measures prolonging my own life. Life at all costs isn’t my philosophy.

fiona64

So, you think you can decide for some other family (without knowing their circumstances) what kind of financial and medical risks they should take?

Your hubris is nearly as enormous as your ignorance.

L-dan

No, a corpse is pretty much by definition no longer a person. It no longer has a lot of the rights or responsibilities of a person. It no longer has thought, feeling, etc.

The fact that we have separate laws making it criminal to treat corpses in certain ways makes it clear that they are not people. Since there are already laws making it illegal to treat people in those ways.

fiona64

A corpse is not a person.

Gah. You are so stupid.

dance commander

I hate using ‘tard’ because it’s ableist.

So I usually resist the temptation.

But ‘Jennifer’ is a fucking retard.

fiona64

There is no such thing as “partial-birth abortion.” The correct name of the procedure is intact d&E.

Why are anti-choicers so upset by correct medical terminology?

Oh, yeah … I forget. You can’t get all hyper-emotional if you are using correct terminology. You have to use secondary appeals because you don’t have any facts/primary appeals at your disposal.

dance commander

Yeah, like I said, learn to fucking READ.

It isn’t ‘partial birth’ it is in fact an ‘intact D&E’

Get it, dumbfuck?

fiona64

Then you really are too stupid for color TV.

Jennifer Starr

I respect her mother’s choice, but the fact that her mother made that choice does not mean that every woman has to make the same choice. And I’m sorry, but I’m really not swayed by the rather silly angst over ‘OMG–I was born after Roe–what If I hadn’t been born!!! Eleventy!’ stuff.

L-dan

Shit, I was born before Roe. And learned relatively recently in conversation that I wasn’t really planned for, disrupted plans, etc. such that maybe post Roe, I wouldn’t have been born.

Oddly, this does not make me think “thank goodness I was conceived before Roe v. Wade,” it makes me think “my poor mother. I wish she’d had that choice.”

dance commander

Do you even understand how abortions are completed. Some abortion
doctors use ultrasound guided abortions. Abby Johnson, a former planned
parenthood director, was a witness to one. She saw the baby fight for
its life, react to pain, and heard the heartbeat while they were
brutally murdered. It is most certainly a different scenario. You should
read up on it.

So not only are you selfish, and a liar, you are also ignorant.

1) fetus within the womb cannot feel pain. not only are the neural connections absent for pain to be perceived, but the fetus is sedated whilst in the womb

I thought that “Jennifer” was the dumbest poster here, but you are running a close second and may even take the crown with your willful ignorance and stupidity. Oh, and need I mention, incredible selfishness.

dance commander

Selfish would be denying me the right to live in order to make someone
else’s life easier. That would be selfish. Wanting to live makes me
human. Tell a cancer patient that they are selfish for wanting to live.
I wonder what your response would be.

Tell us honey, would you make it mandatory that people such as YOURSELF have to donate bone marrow and other organs BY LAW to save the lives of cancer patients? If you don’t allow someone with liver cancer to take 1/2 of your liver so that they can live you are a seflish asshole, you do know that right? So, how many organs have you donated and how many do you plan to donate?

Selfish is forcing another to put life and limb on the line so that you can live.

YOUR MOM IS A PERSON, NOT A SLAVE

Selfish is forcing another person to undergo all of the below for a
microscopic cell that is smaller than the period at the end of this
sentence:

Normal, frequent or expectable temporary side effects of pregnancy:

exhaustion (weariness common from first weeks)

altered appetite and senses of taste and smell

nausea and vomiting (50% of women, first trimester)

heartburn and indigestion

constipation

weight gain

dizziness and light-headedness

bloating, swelling, fluid retention

hemmorhoids

abdominal cramps

yeast infections

congested, bloody nose

acne and mild skin disorders

skin discoloration (chloasma, face and abdomen)

mild to severe backache and strain

increased headaches

difficulty sleeping, and discomfort while sleeping

increased urination and incontinence

bleeding gums

pica

breast pain and discharge

swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain

difficulty sitting, standing in later pregnancy

inability to take regular medications

shortness of breath

higher blood pressure

hair loss

tendency to anemia

curtailment of ability to participate in some sports and activities

infection including from serious and potentially fatal disease

(pregnant women are immune suppressed compared with non-pregnant women,
and are more susceptible to fungal and certain other diseases)

extreme pain on delivery

hormonal mood changes, including normal post-partum depression

continued
post-partum exhaustion and recovery period (exacerbated if a c-section —
major surgery — is required, sometimes taking up to a full year to
fully recover)

Normal, expectable, or frequent PERMANENT side effects of pregnancy:

stretch marks (worse in younger women)

loose skin

permanent weight gain or redistribution

abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness

pelvic
floor disorder (occurring in as many as 35% of middle-aged former
child-bearers and 50% of elderly former child-bearers, associated with
urinary and rectal incontinence, discomfort and reduced quality of life —
aka prolapsed utuerus, the malady sometimes badly fixed by the
transvaginal mesh)

changes to breasts

varicose veins

scarring from episiotomy or c-section

other
permanent aesthetic changes to the body (all of these are downplayed by
women, because the culture values youth and beauty)

increased proclivity for hemmorhoids

loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis)

higher lifetime risk of developing Altzheimer’s

newer
research indicates microchimeric cells, other bi-directional exchanges
of DNA, chromosomes, and other bodily material between fetus and mother
(including with “unrelated” gestational surrogates)

pre-eclampsia
(edema and hypertension, the most common complication of pregnancy,
associated with eclampsia, and affecting 7 – 10% of pregnancies)

eclampsia (convulsions, coma during pregnancy or labor, high risk of death)

gestational diabetes

placenta previa

anemia (which can be life-threatening)

thrombocytopenic purpura

severe cramping

embolism (blood clots)

medical
disability requiring full bed rest (frequently ordered during part of
many pregnancies varying from days to months for health of either mother
or baby)

diastasis recti, also torn abdominal muscles

mitral valve stenosis (most common cardiac complication)

serious infection and disease (e.g. increased risk of tuberculosis)

hormonal imbalance

ectopic pregnancy (risk of death)

broken bones (ribcage, “tail bone”)

hemorrhage and

numerous other complications of delivery

refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease

aggravation
of pre-pregnancy diseases and conditions (e.g. epilepsy is present in
.5% of pregnant women, and the pregnancy alters drug metabolism and
treatment prospects all the while it increases the number and frequency
of seizures)

severe post-partum depression and psychosis

research
now indicates a possible link between ovarian cancer and female
fertility treatments, including “egg harvesting” from infertile women
and donors

research
also now indicates correlations between lower breast cancer survival
rates and proximity in time to onset of cancer of last pregnancy

research also indicates a correlation between having six or more pregnancies and a risk of coronary and cardiovascular disease

Less common (but serious) complications:

peripartum cardiomyopathy

cardiopulmonary arrest

magnesium toxicity

severe hypoxemia/acidosis

massive embolism

increased intracranial pressure, brainstem infarction

molar pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease

(like a pregnancy-induced cancer)

malignant arrhythmia

circulatory collapse

placental abruption

obstetric fistula

More permanent side effects:

future infertility

permanent disability

death.

Jennifer

Almost all of the side effects you mentioned are due to specific problems during a pregnancy, and numerous similar effects are associated with various prescription pills, yet people consume them highly; then of course there are the nasty side effects of birth control pills, abortions and the horrors that have happened to fetuses in second and third trimesters, which always, always end in death and never in life. If you’re going to claim breats cancer survival is now lowered by pregnancy, you should include a source.

dance commander

No, you ignorant fucktard, they are common side effects to pregnancies.

1.2 million women are permanently disabled as a result of pregnancy.

Jennifer

Still no sources. You clearly told Erin that her right to live was less
important than her mother’s right to abort her.

Looks like the most
raging posters have taken over here, but oh well; neither side will change. I’m
sure, Erin, you don’t need to be told that sedating a child doesn’t make killing
it ok, or that some women have had to go without sedation because in some
clinics, it costs extra (this was confirmed by a pro-choice women at the site
“No Longer Quivering” as well as others). Even you, Dance, submitted an article
from a site saying that fetuses are naturally sedated in the womb UP until 24
weeks, after which we all know some abortions have still taken place, but now
you seem to be retracting that opinion with the link to some articles from 2005.
In your original quotes from medical sites on the other abortion article, you cited articles from 1964 and 1982,
before a GREAT deal of knowledge was gained about fetuses, numerous surgeries, and
even what lobotomies entail (at least in the 1964 case). Your most recent DATED
article is from 2005, while at least one of the others said a fetus could
PROBABLY not feel, and then before 30 weeks. Either way, your arguments have
gaps: it’s ok to kill an almost totally formed baby because it allegedly can’t
feel. When reading articles about horror films many years ago, I saw horrific
and unexpected pictures from one..evil film about a monster mutilating a sedated
child; no one would defend that sickness on the grounds that she couldn’t feel,
and that’s just how later fetuses end up after several abortions, in pieces. If
they can’t feel until 24-30 weeks, how about fetuses removed and then left on
the table to die? You link a picture to tiny pieces of tissue, which most
abortions do not involve even in the first trimester, and you’ve all defended
third trimester abortions based on the claim that they only happen because of
life-threatening or “hard” cases, yet have also at different times said you
defend a woman’s right to end a pregnancy whatever the cause. You dismissed
partial births even though they’re legal still in nine states, which doesn’t
even cover other gruesome ways of aborting babies in the same late term. And all
this ignores second trimester abortions, which usually remove what are clearly
tiny babies, sometimes involving children whose sexes and functioning hearts
were well-known, yet aborted because they may have had a mental disorder
(including a brain, however, not merely a brain stem). If you don’t care that
third trimester or second trimester abortions occur, why bother trying to
convince me that most only involve tiny pieces of unidentifiable tissue? I don’t know what your story is Dance, if you’ve been raped, or abused verbally by those who define pregnancies as containing babies even when there’s only an egg not even attached yet, but few things invoke such hatred and rage from someone even in a debate, so I have to wonder. Either way, you don’t have peace about this; it’s hard for most to in any case, because of all the conflicting issues, but you speak as one who may have gone through hell. I sincerely hope you heal if you have been through that regardless of whether you still think I’m dishonest or a shit. The truth is, I HOPE your sources are up to speed and correct about the fetus and what it feels, because otherwise the procedures are doubly cruel with any fetus beyond 30 week or however many weeks. Have a good night.

Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death
and disability among women of reproductive age (ages 15 to 44) in less
developed countries. About half of the nearly 120 million women who give
birth each year experience some kind of complication during their
pregnancies, and between 15 million and 20 million develop disabilities
such as severe anemia, incontinence, damage to the reproductive organs
or nervous system, chronic pain, and infertility.1

Each year, more than 500,000 women, predominantly in less developed
countries, die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Yet the
deaths are only the tip of the iceberg: For every death, at least
another 30 women suffer serious illness or debilitating injuries.2 Though these women are fortunate to survive, their injuries can have devastating social and physical consequences.

Professors of science, anthropology and psychology all have varying opinions of why rapists do what they do. All I know is that I’ve made it clear rape-pregnancies are terrible, while you’ve screeched that rape is natural biologically and that I claimed that’s what women were made for.

dance commander

Yes you did claim that.

You claimed that women were made for pregnancy

A rape pregnancy is still a pregnancy, dumbass

And penises were meant to go into vaginas

Ergo, rape and rape pregnancy is perfectly natural

Why on earth would you NOT think rape is natural?

L-dan

Yep. Rape is horrible but perfectly natural. So is cyanide.

If one is arguing that abortion is bad because women are naturally designed to carry fetuses, and therefore they must carry fetuses once they’re inside of them, it’s sort of hard to carve out an exception for rape that makes sense.

When one determines that what a body is capable of doing confers no requirements that it actually do those things, it sort of clears up that problem.

I mean penises are made for, among other things, putting sperm into vaginas. We don’t actually require any men to go do so. We don’t claim that gay men are just unfathomable for not wanting to go put their sperm into some vaginas.

dance commander

Exactly.

Jennifer

I didn’t say abortion was bad because pregnancy was natural; I said killing a child is bad, in later abortions, and defended pregnancy as a function in general because it’s natural. Homosexuality is an exception to the biological norm.

dance commander

Homosexuality is also completely natural and is practised by thousands of species.

Sex did not only evolve for procreation, it evolved as a form of social bonding. And same sexes can bond through sex.

dance commander

Cancer is also natural, fuckwit.

Jennifer

Cancer is not vital for the existence of a species.

dance commander

Actually, death and disease ARE vital for the existence of a species.

Without death, species would eat themselves out of food and space and die of famine.

Jennifer

I said that women are created to be able to bear offspring, not that this is their only purpose. Besides, here’s another difference between rape and pregnancy perse, then I have to go: rape is done, forced in fact, by a person by choice. Pregnancy is natural in that it happens without choice and the body nurtures, holds and eventually expels the baby all on its own.

dance commander

Yeah, so you are arguing that rape pregnancy = natural

Thanks for agreeing.

dance commander

Some species reproduce solely through rape.

Humans are animals.

Rape is an evolutionary mating strategy.

It IS natural, but that doesn’t make it RIGHT.

Just like pregnancy is NATURAL, but it’s not RIGHT to force a woman to remain pregnant against her will.

Jennifer

Very few species do, and even in animal species, many females have evolved ways to fight off rape or even reject sperm from them.

dance commander

I provided you with the scholarly articles – I suggest you read them.

fiona64

many females have evolved ways to fight off rape or even reject sperm from them.

ROFLMAO.

Is Todd Akin your daddy?

dance commander

You clearly told Erin that her right to live was less
important than her mother’s right to abort her.

Your right to life does not give you the right to disable torture and steal blood and organs from another person.

Jennifer

What about torturing fetuses, including through saline abortion as in the past?

dance commander

Fetuses cannot feel pain, I fucking proved this to you time and time and time again.

I provided you with 6 links backing up the FACT that fetuses are sedated and anesthetized while in the uterus.

Jennifer

Two sources of which were from before the last two decades, the most recent which said up until 30 WEEKS. Specious.

Evidence examined by the Working Party showed that the fetus,
while in the chemical environment of the womb, is in a state of induced
sleep and is unconscious

2) Also in 2005, David Mellor and colleagues reviewed several
lines of evidence that suggested a fetus does not awaken during its time
in the womb. Mellor notes that much of the literature on fetal pain
simply extrapolates from findings and research on premature babies. He
questions the value of such data:

Systematic studies of fetal neurological function suggest, however,
that
there are major differences in the in utero environment and fetal
neural state that make it likely that this assumption is substantially
incorrect.

He and his team detected the presence of such chemicals as
adenosine, pregnanolone, and prostaglandin-D2 in both human and animal
fetuses, indicating that the fetus is both
sedated and anesthetized
in the womb. These chemicals are oxidized with the newborn’s first few
breaths and washed out of the tissues, allowing consciousness to occur.
If the fetus is asleep throughout gestation then the possibility of
fetal pain is greatly minimized. “A fetus,” Mellor told The New York
Times, “is not a baby who just hasn’t been born yet.”

3) There is also discussion among researchers about how pain is
perceived over-all. Some researchers believe that because pain can
involve sensory, emotional and cognitive factors, pain may not be sensed
until after birth. Direct fetal analgesia is used in only a minority of
prenatal surgeries.

Johnson, Martin and Everitt, Barry. Essential reproduction

4) The report argues that pain responses may begin to develop only
after a baby is born, and no longer sedated in the womb, and that this
may explain why neonates experience pain differently to fetuses. “It is
only after birth, with the separation of the baby from the uterus and
the umbilical cord, that wakefulness truly begins,” it concludes.

Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endogenous sedation

————–

Six references dumbass. FETII DO NOT FEEL PAIN BECAUSE THEY ARE
SEDATED WHILE IN THE WOMB. THEY ARE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE NECESSARY
CONNECTIONS NEEDED TO *PERCEIVE* PAIN ARE NOT ‘HOOKED UP’ UNTIL 30 WEEKS
GESTATION, AT WHICH POINT A WOMAN WILL NOT BE HAVING AN ‘ABORTION OF
CONVENIENCE’

Jennifer

Last night you gave sources too, two of which were dated from the 60’s or 80’s.

dance commander

I gave you these sources last night too dumbfuck

learn to fucking read

Jennifer

Yes, and the latest was 2005 and still wasn’t positive fetuses couldn’t feel. Even then, it was only up to a point that they couldn’t.

dance commander

Nope, the latest was 2010 (if you had bothered to read the links) and it proved, again, that fetii don’t feel pain

And just because information is ‘old’ doesn’t mean it’s inavlid.

I mean, the theory of gravity is ‘old’ but that doesn’t mean gravity doesn’t exist you fucking tard.

Jennifer

And once again, feti are only numb to pain up to a certain point in a pregnancy. And the word “probably” was used quite often. I HOPE they’re right about this limit of feeling.

Evidence examined by the Working Party showed that the fetus,
while in the chemical environment of the womb, is in a state of induced
sleep and is unconscious

2) Also in 2005, David Mellor and colleagues reviewed several
lines of evidence that suggested a fetus does not awaken during its time
in the womb. Mellor notes that much of the literature on fetal pain
simply extrapolates from findings and research on premature babies. He
questions the value of such data:

Systematic studies of fetal neurological function suggest, however,
that
there are major differences in the in utero environment and fetal
neural state that make it likely that this assumption is substantially
incorrect.

He and his team detected the presence of such chemicals as
adenosine, pregnanolone, and prostaglandin-D2 in both human and animal
fetuses, indicating that the fetus is both
sedated and anesthetized
in the womb. These chemicals are oxidized with the newborn’s first few
breaths and washed out of the tissues, allowing consciousness to occur.
If the fetus is asleep throughout gestation then the possibility of
fetal pain is greatly minimized. “A fetus,” Mellor told The New York
Times, “is not a baby who just hasn’t been born yet.”

3) There is also discussion among researchers about how pain is
perceived over-all. Some researchers believe that because pain can
involve sensory, emotional and cognitive factors, pain may not be sensed
until after birth. Direct fetal analgesia is used in only a minority of
prenatal surgeries.

Johnson, Martin and Everitt, Barry. Essential reproduction

4) The report argues that pain responses may begin to develop only
after a baby is born, and no longer sedated in the womb, and that this
may explain why neonates experience pain differently to fetuses. “It is
only after birth, with the separation of the baby from the uterus and
the umbilical cord, that wakefulness truly begins,” it concludes.

Choice, it’s a thing. Nobody forces most of us to take medications. We get to chose whether or not to undergo the side effects. Likewise birth control pills.

Likewise, whether or not we want to risk our lives and health to create a new person. This is, and should be, a volunteer only gig.

You think the horrors that happen to unfeeling, unthinking fetuses is bad, have you seen what happens to those scrambling for unsafe abortions when they’re not otherwise available?

Jennifer

I call them desperate, irrational as most desperate people are, and in need of real help.

L-dan

How compassionate. You care more for unthinking fetuses than walking, feeling people. Charming.

Jennifer

Not wanting living children to be torn apart doesn’t mean I care about them more than woman; no one’s demanding the women be killed.

dance commander

Fetus isn’t a child.

dance commander

And as has been explained to you, the majority of abortions occur before 13 weeks and the fetus is expelled intact.

L-dan

No, you’re just demanding that they be used as incubators, erasing the personhood of existing people in favor of the potential personhood of not yet existing ones. You are weighing the welfare of a non-sentient, unaware organism over that of feeling, thinking beings. That is a bit like putting the welfare of your cat over that of other family members…and the cat thinks and suffers more than a fetus.

fiona64

If you know of anyone who is “tearing apart” “living children,” please contact your local law enforcement authority …

Jennifer Starr

If you end abortion, you’re not going to make women who don’t want to be pregnant, for whatever reason,suddenly thrilled to give birth and be mommies because they have no other choice. You’re simply going to make them more desperate to find ways to end their pregnancies, whether legally or illegally.

fiona64

“Jennifer” does seem to naively believe that no abortions happened during the 90 or so years that it was illegal in the United States.

“Jennifer” needs to crack a friggin’ book.

CJ99

yet you continue to impersonate another user of this site while spewing desperate irrational delusions.

dance commander

I have signed up to be an organ donor. If someone needed my marrow you
better believe I would go through surgery to save someone else. I do not
believe in the death penalty.

Someone needs your marrow right now. And a kidney. And a partial liver. I am sure some kid with cancer could use your hair.

So, put up, or shut up.

Also, do you support MANDATORY blood/organ/bone marrow donation? Should it be LAW that people be forced to donate their body to save lives? yes or no?

fiona64

Reply to Erin, in moderation:

Nope. Embryos and feti *cannot* “react to pain,” as they lack the physical capacity to experience it until so late in pregnancy that abortion on demand is a moot point. Response to stimulus is NOT response to pain.

Is biology no longer taught? Wow.

Arekushieru

Then why comment, if you think they have no substance, hmm?

Jennifer

Because such nonsense pisses me off.

dance commander

Pisses you off that women have the right to self-determination eh?

Pisses you off that women have the right not to die from a doomed pregnancy at 8 months.

Jennifer

It pisses me off that we’re supposed to feel sorry for a pretty well-off, engaged couple that bitched about not getting an abortion in what is described as a very emotionally over-done video. The rape victim, I will cry for, not these people.

dance commander

Oh, so only *some* women are deserving of abortion, you say?

Jennifer

I’d say only some women are sympathetic for wanting one, but very few I’d say “deserve” one, because for many women they’re horrible things.

dance commander

Abortion is 14x safer than pregnancy.

Jennifer

Maybe, but emotionally it can be devastating.

dance commander

And it can be a huge relief.

Many many women do not regret their abortions.

Jennifer

That’s what I always said when I was more pro-choice, and many women don’t regret them, especially if they were early. But the problem is that so many more than I expected grieve over them, especially if they find that the fetus was more developed than they believed.

dance commander

A new study from University of California, San Francisco
found that the majority of women feel relief one week after having an
abortion. However, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson feels compelled
to mock and stigmatize women who make personal choices about their own
bodies. I wonder how he will make this study into his next abortion
joke.

Because a great deal of your articles are extremely dated, and say things like “probably”. Once again: even if the fetus can’t feel, it’s still ending a child’s life.

dance commander

A zygote/embryo/fetus is not a child.

No born person has the right to use another person’s body without consent.

Parents cannot even be forced by law to donate blood to save their child’s life.

If you want a fetus to be treated as a person, then it does not have the right to use another persons’ body as life support. That is equal rights.

Jennifer

If it has equal rights, it should also have to give permission before having its own body violated or invaded.

dance commander

Nope.

If someone is using your body against your will you have the right to remove them from your person in self-defense, even if it kills them.

Jennifer

How is it self-defense if the mother’s not in danger? Pregnancy is a unique thing that doesn’t relate to parasites or organ donors, and no matter what side you’re on, it needs to be treated as such.

dance commander

Well, your life wouldn’t be in danger if you donated blood, bone marrow or kidney/liver.

Your life wouldn’t be in danger if you donated your corneas to give someone sight

In fact, even after DEATH, your life wouldn’t be in danger, because you’d be DEAD

Yet you refuse to donate your organs to save a life why is that?

PS: pregnancy kills and maims, this is a fact, and we do not demand, as a society, that people put life and health on the line to save another

Tell us, do you think a woman should be FORCED to continue a pregnancy even if that pregnancy is causing her to go blind? or lose limbs? or develop cancer?

fiona64

You really are a dumbfuck.

Even relatively uncomplicated pregnancies cause permanent physiological damage to a woman’s body. You might want to look up things like pubic symphysis diastasis … which can become so severe that women are no longer able to walk. The condition occurs in 100 percent of pregnancies to one degree or another.

Or perhaps gestational diabetes … which can become permanent.

Pregnancy is so far from being a state of wellness that it isn’t even funny.

It’s also far from being “unique.”

fiona64

So sorry that you’re too stupid to understand science.

The point is, and remains, that the studies in question have been replicated *repeatedly* and have the same findings.

fiona64

You are the intellectual equivalent of a cat pan …

L-dan

And how many of those would undo it? Some, probably, like any decision we make. But I know more who regret having children than who regret abortions. Should we therefore place more hurdles in the way of childbearing? Pass a “you really really want children and know what you’re getting into” test or you’re not allowed to continue your pregnancy.

Hint, that scenario is just as horrifying to pro-choice individuals as the raft of abortion restrictions, because Choice.

fiona64

Nope, it really isn’t. The majority of women feel nothing but *relief* after an abortion.

Even C. Everett Koop, the notoriously anti-choice former Surgeon-General, admitted that there was no such thing as post-abortion syndrome.

Jennifer Starr

Unless you are capable of carrying this woman’s pregnancy for her it’s not up to you, or me, to judge her reasons for not wishing to be pregnant.

Jennifer

I try not to judge the person Jennifer, but you don’t have to judge the person to find the act awful.

Jennifer Starr

And I don’t have to personally agree with someone’s choice in order to support their right to make it.

Jennifer

No indeed, you don’t.

fiona64

Liar … your entire post was judging that couple.

Arekushieru

Also, terminating or completing a PREGNANCY is a right. The fetus causes the pregnancy but is NOT equivalent to it. Learn to Biology, please.

Pregnancy is the second fucking leading cause of death for women, WORLDWIDE. Learn to Health, please.

No one would be denying you the right to live. By making abortion illegal, you would be granting MORE rights to a fetus and denying your MOTHER the right to live. Learn to Law, please.

Telling a cancer patient that they are selfish for wanting to live at the expense of someone ELSE’ life is the better comparison. Telling a cancer patient they are selfish for wanting to live, is NOT the same fucking thing, after all. SFS. Learn to Analogy, please.

Your mom is a human being, who deserves the same rights as everyone else, not have them suborned to a DISPUTABLE human being. Learn to Development, please.

Finally, what YOU are being is Greedy, which is a sin. Selfishness, not. Learn to Bible, please.

dance commander

The fetus causes the pregnancy but is NOT equivalent to it.

I really hate when anti-choicers say that terminating a pregnancy (just to be free of the pregnancy) is inherently immoral because the embryo is synonymous WITH the pregnancy. “They are the same thing, they say, to end the pregnancy is to malicously kill the tiny human inside of you.”

BTW, I love you Are. You are good at the putdown:P

dance commander

Yeah, you definitely sound like a guy pretending to be a girl. It comes out every now and again.

Jennifer

LOL!! Your comments are funny.

dance commander

Thanks, that means a lot coming from a braindead idiot such as yourself.

Jennifer

I’m sure it does.

dance commander

If are sounded any bit coherent and actually had facts to support what
he or she said it might have been something. Since none of that is true
it added no gravity to the situation.

I suggest, you selfish piece of shit, that you check your own grammar before bitching about how someone else doesn’t make sense.

Evidence examined by the Working Party showed that the fetus,
while in the chemical environment of the womb, is in a state of induced
sleep and is unconscious

2) Also in 2005, David Mellor and colleagues reviewed several
lines of evidence that suggested a fetus does not awaken during its time
in the womb. Mellor notes that much of the literature on fetal pain
simply extrapolates from findings and research on premature babies. He
questions the value of such data:

Systematic studies of fetal neurological function suggest, however,
that
there are major differences in the in utero environment and fetal
neural state that make it likely that this assumption is substantially
incorrect.

He and his team detected the presence of such chemicals as
adenosine, pregnanolone, and prostaglandin-D2 in both human and animal
fetuses, indicating that the fetus is both
sedated and anesthetized
in the womb. These chemicals are oxidized with the newborn’s first few
breaths and washed out of the tissues, allowing consciousness to occur.
If the fetus is asleep throughout gestation then the possibility of
fetal pain is greatly minimized. “A fetus,” Mellor told The New York
Times, “is not a baby who just hasn’t been born yet.”

3) There is also discussion among researchers about how pain is
perceived over-all. Some researchers believe that because pain can
involve sensory, emotional and cognitive factors, pain may not be sensed
until after birth. Direct fetal analgesia is used in only a minority of
prenatal surgeries.

Johnson, Martin and Everitt, Barry. Essential reproduction

4) The report argues that pain responses may begin to develop only
after a baby is born, and no longer sedated in the womb, and that this
may explain why neonates experience pain differently to fetuses. “It is
only after birth, with the separation of the baby from the uterus and
the umbilical cord, that wakefulness truly begins,” it concludes.

Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endogenous sedation

dance commander

If are sounded any bit coherent and actually had facts to support what
he or she said it might have been something. Since none of that is true
it added no gravity to the situation.

Oh,
and if everything Arek is saying is false, prove how she’s wrong,
dumbass. You can’t just say she’s wrong and then not back it up.

JamieHaman

Gosnell is a sick sick man. Don’t judge doctors who hand out meds for a medical abortion by the same standards. They really don’t apply.
Legal abortion results in less maternal death than illegal abortion.

Jennifer

I’m glad you feel that way about him! Such people really don’t care about women.

JamieHaman

I personally think Gosnell just wanted to kill people, and this was the way he chose to do just that. He’s revolting. I think all the Gosnells of the world don’t care about any people at all.

Jennifer

Precisely.

L-dan

I think he wanted to make money and saw a way to make some off of the desperation of others. Said desperation made it less likely that they would report him too. Predator.

dance commander

If you were educated your grammar wouldn’t be so abysmal.

You’re a dumbfuck and it’s blatantly obvious.

dance commander

I would like you to tell a cancer patient that their desire to live is selfish

How many bone marrow transfers have you given to leukemia patients?

The cancer patients RIGHT TO LIVE outweighs your right to your bone marrow.

People are waiting RIGHT NOW for bone marrow. You are a match for someone.

So, when are you going to donate? You can save a sick child.

Or are you too fucking selfish?

L-dan

Yes, yes. Every sentient person wants to be alive. However embryos, fetuses, etc. don’t have the capacity to *want* anything.

Being grateful that your mother chose to have you? I can see that. Feeling that because she made that choice, nobody else should be able to make a different one is pretty damn selfish.

If you hadn’t been born, you and the rest of the world would never notice. There would be no you to feel anything about your nonexistence. Is that really such a horrible thought for you?

dance commander

I bet it is. Erin considers herself to be a special snowflake.

Jennifer

Actually, everyone’s a unique “snowflake”. That’s why some don’t like even earliest abortions, because it’s a zygote with a unique genetic code.

dance commander

Wrong again dumbass:

Here, some actual science from some actual biologists who are not ignorant fuckwits such as yourself:

1)Biologist Johnathan M Sullivan MD PhD writes: You and I contain
much, much more information, both genetic and otherwise, than a
blastocyst. That’s why I can write this column and you can read it,
whereas a blastocyst just.. .sits there. Indeed, that is the exactly the
point of stem cell research: the stem cells in the blastocyst have not
yet
acquired the molecular programming required for differentiation,
and so they remain pluripotent, awaiting the necessary molecular
signals (the information) that will tell them whether to become nerve or
muscle, skin or bone.

Blastocysts are nothing more than a little clump of cells, each of
them a snippet of DNA surrounded by cytoplasm. But that DNA was later
transcribed into RNA, and that RNA was translated into proteins. And
some of those proteins were transcription factors that told other cells

in the blastocyst what to do, when to divide, where to migrate.
Transcription factors regulated the expression of still other
transcription factors. Genes were turned on and off with clockwork
precision. Some genes were methylated, so they could never be turned on
again.

In other words, the genome and the proteome of the blastocyst were
changed as the embryo accumulated molecular information that the
blastocyst did not have.

The embryo became a fetus, with complex orientations of
tissues–loaded with spatial, genetic, biochemical and mechanical information that simply did not exist in the embryo.

The fetus became a child with a nervous system, and that nervous
system sucked up information about the world, hard-wiring pathways for
vision and movement, learning to make subtle distinctions between this
and that, accumulating information that simply did not exist in the
fetus.

In other words, the blastocyst launched a genetic program that both
extracted and acquired information. It didn’t start out as a human
being. It became a human being, with a personality, feelings, attitudes
and memories, by accumulating information that was not there before.

Equating a blastocyst with a human being is like equating a brand new
copy of an inexpensive spreadsheet program with the priceless databases
that you’ll eventually build up with that program. It’s no less
ridiculous than saying that a blueprint has the same value as a skyscraper–that it is the skycraper.

No. They are not the same.

2) Biologist Scott Gilbert writes:

Genetics

This view states that a genetically unique person begins at
conception – a fertilized egg now hosts a complete genome, making it
distinct from the sex cells that came before it. This definition has the
advantage of saying that a new individual has been created that can be
distinct from its parents, but is still limited by the fact that this
embryo is still in an early stage of development and far from viable as
an individual.

This view also causes a funny paradox in the case of monozygotic
(identical) twins: each twin does not exist as an individual when “its
life begins” – that is, when it is conceived as the embryo doesn’t split
into two parts until later. This paradox could possibly be resolved by
considering the pre-twinning embryo as a disparate entity
from
either of the resulting embryos. This is why viewing the formation of
life as a continuous process rather than a single event is beneficial.

Instructions for Development and Heredity are NOT all in the
Fertilised egg. The view that we are genetically determined by the
combination of parental DNA has been shown to fall far short of the
complete story. How the DNA is interpreted can vary greatly affected by
things such as the maternal diet. Similarly some development requires

certain bacteria to be present. Thirdly, and most surprisingly, the
level of maternal care can determine which areas of DNA are ‘methylated’
which radically alters how they are interpreted. As such the view that
we are ‘complete but unformed’ at conception is far from accurate.

The Embryo is NOT Safe Within the Womb. Modern research shows that
30% or fewer fertilised eggs will go on to become foetuses. Many of
these early miscarriages
are because of abnormal numbers of
chromosomes. The view that every fertilised egg is a potential human
being is wrong in around 70% of cases.

There is NOT a Moment of Fertilisation when the passive egg receives
the active sperm.Again recent research has shown that the previous
commonly held view that the fastest sperm races towards the egg and,
bingo, we’re up and running is wrong on many levels. Fertilisation is a
process
taking up to four days. As such there is no magic moment, rather there
is a process. There is NO consensus amongst scientists that life begins
at
conception.There isn’t even consensus amongst scientists as to whether
there’s consensus. There is no consensus amongst embryologists, let
alone scientists.

Neurology

Just as death is usually defined by the cessation of brain activity,
so the start of life can be defined as the start of a recognisable
Electroencephalography[wp] (EEG) pattern from the fetus. This is usually
twenty four to twenty seven weeks after conception.

The point of using neurological factors rather than other signs such
as a heartbeat is that this is a much more useful indicator from the
point of view of science. A heart beats using mostly involuntary muscle
movements so is really little different from any other spontaneous
motion
or metabolic processes. A heartbeat means relatively little in real
terms, although it is more dramatic from an emotive point of view.

Jennifer

What the hell’s your point? I did NOT compare a zygote to a person, I said others do, and we all have a unique DNA code unless we’re an identical twin.

dance commander

Unique DNA does not a person make.

Cancers have unique DNA.

Jennifer

Some animals have no conception of life as a bigger whole, but the smallest will fight to defend themselves, and there have been accounts of fetuses doing the same, pulling away from instruments.

Evidence examined by the Working Party showed that the fetus,
while in the chemical environment of the womb, is in a state of induced
sleep and is unconscious

2) Also in 2005, David Mellor and colleagues reviewed several
lines of evidence that suggested a fetus does not awaken during its time
in the womb. Mellor notes that much of the literature on fetal pain
simply extrapolates from findings and research on premature babies. He
questions the value of such data:

Systematic studies of fetal neurological function suggest, however,
that
there are major differences in the in utero environment and fetal
neural state that make it likely that this assumption is substantially
incorrect.

He and his team detected the presence of such chemicals as
adenosine, pregnanolone, and prostaglandin-D2 in both human and animal
fetuses, indicating that the fetus is both
sedated and anesthetized
in the womb. These chemicals are oxidized with the newborn’s first few
breaths and washed out of the tissues, allowing consciousness to occur.
If the fetus is asleep throughout gestation then the possibility of
fetal pain is greatly minimized. “A fetus,” Mellor told The New York
Times, “is not a baby who just hasn’t been born yet.”

3) There is also discussion among researchers about how pain is
perceived over-all. Some researchers believe that because pain can
involve sensory, emotional and cognitive factors, pain may not be sensed
until after birth. Direct fetal analgesia is used in only a minority of
prenatal surgeries.

Johnson, Martin and Everitt, Barry. Essential reproduction

4) The report argues that pain responses may begin to develop only
after a baby is born, and no longer sedated in the womb, and that this
may explain why neonates experience pain differently to fetuses. “It is
only after birth, with the separation of the baby from the uterus and
the umbilical cord, that wakefulness truly begins,” it concludes.

Why doesn’t there have to be conscious thought? Why should I care about reflexes? Should I fret over a paramecium moving reflexively from a noxious substance?

Again, most of the country (and world) eat things that feel more and think at a higher level than aborted fetuses. So I don’t see that reflex movement should somehow make me think “Oh no, that’s so horrible! We should force conscious, thinking people to carry unwanted pregnancies lest we trigger some reflex movement in the fetuses!”

it’s not a ‘fight for life’ it’s just a reflex originating in the brain stem which is common to all animals and even certain bacteria

JamieHaman

Quick question for you, I want to know how you think legal safe abortion is bankrupting our society? In what way(s)? How does it affect our society in a material or spiritual fashion?

fiona64

If these articles have no substance, why is your trolling, teenaged boy ass here?

Jennifer Starr

I apologize for the ‘teenager’ thing. The reason I said teenager is that it’s generally teens who tend to call themselves ‘abortion survivors’ just because they were born after 1973. It’s usually teens who play the “What if I had never been born?” game or think that asking “What if your mom had aborted you?” is really a question that will stop pro-choicers in their tracks (and trust me, it isn’t). I know this, because once upon a time I was one of those teens who obsessed about that and asked people that question. And thank goodness, I’ve been past that stage for a good long while.

Your mother clearly made the decision that she wanted to make and it was the best decision for her. From what you’ve said about her so far I can’t imagine her choosing any differently. Sure it was difficult, but it was a challenge she freely chose to face. So it seems pointless to speculate about the alternative. You might as well worry about what would’ve happened if they hadn’t made love that night or what if another sperm had been a stronger swimmer–it makes just about as much sense.

dance commander

You’re too nice.

I don’t believe that she is as educated as she claims. She comes across like an idiot.

Jennifer Starr

You wrote ‘First of all, please learn to write grammatically correct.

I don’t wish to nitpick, but this first sentence is not grammatically correct. You might ask for someone to ‘learn to use correct grammar’ or to ‘write in a manner which is grammatically correct’, though the second one sounds a bit awkward. Regardless, you should not ask someone to do something which you are not able to do yourself.

fiona64

I have had a very high risk pregnancy. My mother did not. Have you?

Why yes, I have. My son is 27 now. And I’m very much pro-choice. Thanks for asking.

According to the women’s health organization 90% of said maternal deaths
are in developing countries. In the US the case of maternal death is
.00024%

Approximately 800 women die per year from pregnancy in the USA. That is more dangerous than rock climbing and hang-gliding.

And from the above, you can see that many many more are injured.

Your life does not trump another person’s right not to be injured. If it did, organ and blood donation would be fucking mandatory.

http://sayingnothingcharmingly.blogspot.com ChristinaM33

I also was that child. I was born in 1971. My parents were 19 and 20. It was not the right time for them and they were not the right people to be raising a child. My mother was prevented from exercising her right to control her own bodily organs.

It ruined BOTH of their lives. I am not so egotistical as to think that my life was worth the misery they both endured. I am not so full of myself as to think that the world would have missed me had I never been here, anymore than it misses the 80% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage. I do know that forcing them to “do the right thing” resulted in 4 lives mired in poverty and misery and ultimately two children neglected, abused and resented.

Had my mother been able to exercise her right to her own body, I would never have known the difference. Perhaps I might have been born to parents who actually wanted a child instead of parents who resented my existence. I am still trying to deal with the damage caused by their abuse and neglect.

And darlin’, my experience as an unwanted child is much more common than YOUR experience as an unplanned child. There is a huge difference between unwanted and unplanned. I think it speaks to the kind of person you are that you seem to believe that OF COURSE everyone would love their child but there are millions of children and thousands of news stories every day that prove that you are factually incorrect. It is not a foregone conclusion that parents love their children. Many do not. Many cannot. Many can’t help but allow the constant never-ending stress of poverty and the fight to survive bleed over into their relationships with their children–the cause of their poverty and struggle.

And adoption is not the nice pat answer that anti-choice folks seem to think it is. Studies show that there are more incidences of depression and regret after adoption than there is after abortion. There are lots of adopted kids that are abused and neglected, returned or flat out given away to strangers on the internet. There are lots of “birth parents” who do not want to be contacted who end up with some adult on their doorstep calling them “Mom”. And none of that negates the damage caused to some children by simply knowing that s/he was unwanted and given away by their “real” parents. So. No easy answers.

That is why it should be up to the person whose internal organs are involved in the process and everyone else needs to get the hell out of her business. If that were the way things were, then every pregnancy, whether planned or unplanned, would be a *wanted* one.